GNU's Who

Thomas Bushnell, n/BSG (whose name used to be Michael)
and Miles Bader
work on the Hurd.
Karl Heuer enhances Emacs and with
Ian Murdock is in charge of making Deluxe
Distributions.
Jim Blandy
is working on GUILE,
GNU's Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extension,
and Teak, a desktop interface.

Melissa Weisshaus is working on special documentation projects.

Peter H. Salus is our Vice President in charge of fund raising,
publishing, conferences, tutorials, and
managing the non-technical side of the FSF.
Prof. Masayuki Ida is our Vice President for Japan.
He is organizing Japanese seminars, working with GNU's friends in Japan, etc.
Tami Friedman RN, BSN is our GNUrse.
She also attends to most of the administrative work in the office.
Brian Youmans is our Distribution Manager
and handles online inquiries.
Robert J. Chassell is our Secretary/Treasurer.
Daniel Hagerty
and
Carol Botteron have left the FSF, but continue to volunteer
for GNU.
We thank them for their hard work.

The GNU's Bulletin is published at the end of January and the end of July
each year. Please note that there is no postal mailing list. To get a copy,
send your name and address with your request to the address on
the top menu.
Enclosing $1.00 in U.S. Postage and/or a donation of a few dollars is
appreciated but not required.
If you're
outside the USA, sending a mailing label and enough International Reply
Coupons for a package of about 100 grams is appreciated but not required.
(Including a few extra International Reply Coupons for copying costs is also
appreciated.)

Other GPL'ed Software

We maintain a list of copylefted software that we do not presently
distribute. FTP the file
`/pub/gnu/GPLedSoftware' from a GNU FTP host (listed in section How to Get GNU Software).
Please let us know of additional programs we should mention.
We don't list Emacs Lisp Libraries;
host archive.cis.ohio-state.edu has a list of those you can FTP
in the file `/pub/gnu/emacs/elisp-archive/LCD-datafile.Z'.

What Is the FSF?

The Free Software Foundation is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on
people's right to use, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs.
We do this by promoting the development and use of free software.
Specifically, we are putting together a complete, integrated software
system named "GNU" ("GNU's Not Unix", pronounced "guh-noo") that
will be upwardly compatible with Unix. Most parts of this system are
already being used and distributed.

The word "free" in our name refers to freedom, not price. You may or may
not pay money to get GNU software, but either way you have three specific
freedoms once you get it: first, the freedom to copy a program, and
distribute it to your friends and co-workers; second, the freedom to change
a program as you wish, by having full access to source code; third, the
freedom to distribute a modified version and thus help build the community.
Free software means you can study the source and learn how such programs
are written; it means you can port it or improve it, and then share your
work with others.

If you redistribute GNU software, you may charge a distribution fee or you
may give it away, so long as you include the source code and the GNU
General Public License; see section What Is Copyleft?, for details.

Other organizations distribute whatever free software happens to be
available. By contrast, the Free Software Foundation concentrates on the
development of new free software, working towards a GNU system complete
enough to eliminate the need to use a proprietary system.

Besides developing GNU, the FSF distributes GNU software and manuals for a
distribution fee, and accepts gifts (tax-deductible in the U.S.) to support
GNU development. Most of the FSF's funds come from its distribution
service.

What Is Copyleft?

The simplest way to make a program free is to put it in the public domain,
uncopyrighted.
But this permits proprietary modified versions, which deny
others the freedom to redistribute and modify; such versions undermine the
goal of giving freedom to all users. To prevent this,
copyleft uses copyrights in a novel manner. Typically, copyrights
take away freedoms; copyleft preserves them. It is a legal instrument that
requires those who pass on a program to include the rights to use, modify,
and redistribute the code; the code and the freedoms become legally
inseparable.

The copyleft used by the GNU Project is made from the combination of a
regular copyright notice and the GNU General Public License (GPL).
The GPL is a copying license which basically says that you have the
aforementioned freedoms. An alternate form, the GNU Library General
Public License (LGPL), applies to a few (but not most) GNU libraries.
This license permits linking the libraries into proprietary executables
under certain conditions. The appropriate license is included in each GNU
source code distribution and in many manuals. Printed copies are available
upon request.

We strongly encourage you to copyleft your programs and documentation,
and we have made it as simple as possible for you to do so. The details
on how to apply either form of GNU Public License appear at the end of each
license.

What Is a GNU/Linux system?

by Richard M. Stallman

A GNU/Linux system is a system which is a combination of Linux and
GNU.

Linux is a kernel, compatible with the Unix kernel, written by Linus
Torvalds.
There are several different distributions available via FTP and CD-ROM.
None are distributed by the FSF at this time.

GNU is a Unix-like operating system. We started the GNU Project in 1984
with the aim of bringing such a system into existence. A Unix-like
operating system consists of many components; we had to obtain each of the
important components somehow. The job was so large that many of the people
who sympathized with the goal were discouraged from attempting it, but we
decided we would reach the goal no matter how long it took.

We found some components already available as free software--for
example, the X Window System & TeX. Naturally we decided to use
them, since the job was big enough even with short cuts. We got
other components by helping to convince their developers to free
them--for example, the Berkeley network utilities.

The rest of components, we had to write. These include Emacs, the
GNU C & C++ compilers & libraries, Bash, Ghostscript, Groff, &
many others.

All of these various components--those we wrote, those we helped make
free, and those we found already available--together make up the GNU
system.

Until recently, users couldn't run the GNU system, because one part
(the kernel; see section What Is the Hurd?) was not yet ready. (We made
the first test release a half year ago.) However, for a couple of years
now, it has been possible to put together the Linux kernel and the
almost-complete GNU system, resulting in a complete Unix-like free
operating system suitable for actual use.

While commonly referred to as "Linux systems", we prefer the term
"Linux-based GNU systems," or "GNU/Linux systems" for short, since
these systems are mostly the same as the GNU system.
This gives Linus credit for the kernel that he
wrote, while still indicating that these systems as a whole are
essentially variants of the GNU system.

We also occasionally use the term "GNU/Hurd system" to emphasize that
we mean a version of the GNU system which uses the Hurd rather than
Linux.

We think it is proper to give the GNU Project credit for making the free
Unix-like system that it set out for a decade ago. But there is a more
important reason for friends of GNU to use names like "Linux-based GNU
system" instead of "Linux system." This is to help spread the GNU
Project's philosophical idea: that there is ethical importance in
freeing users to share software and cooperate in improving it; that free
software belongs to a community, and people who benefit from the
community should feel a moral obligation to help build the community
when they have a chance.

When users install a system which they call "Linux," they can easily miss
ever seeing the GNU idea. When businesses promote a system and call it
"Linux," they can easily avoid bringing the GNU idea to users' attention.
And if the GNU idea is not widely known, fewer people will write free
software.

A conference was recently announced on the topic of developing "Linux
applications"; although the conference is about using the GNU system, the
conference announcement did not mention GNU.

The announcement does not even hint that there is any ethical reason to
contribute to free software. On the contrary, it offers a panel
entitled, "Licenses and licensing--I don't want to give away my
application!!!" (The three `!' marks appear in the announcement).
Even the title encourages people writing new software (which
could enhance all free operating systems) to make it proprietary
instead, thus contributing nothing to the free software community.

It would be harder to express that attitude if everyone knew that the
topic is a variant of the GNU system. It is up to you and us to make
sure they know. To do that, we have to inform people using variant
GNU systems that that is what they are doing.

So please use "Linux-based GNU system" or "GNU/Linux"
when you talk about a system which is a combination of Linux & GNU.
At first, it may feel strange to go against the flow, but think how much
more "against the flow" it was to start writing a free operating system.
We did it, and you can do it.

Become a Patron of the FSF

The Free Software Foundation wants to acknowledge its
supporters and contributors in a more visible fashion.
You can now become an "official" supporter of the FSF.

$100 makes you a Supporter of the FSF;
you get a listing of your name in GNU's Bulletin for a year.

$500 makes you a Contributor;
you get a mention, a Certificate and a "Thank GNUs."

$1000 makes you a Sustaining Contributor;
you get a mention, a Certificate, and a gift.

$5000 makes you a Patron;
you get all the "benefits" of a Sustaining Contributor
plus a special gift.

The Free Software Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization;
all contributions are tax deductible in the US.

Free Software Redistributors Donate

In adddition to their conference donation,
RedHatSoftware
has agreed to
donate $1.00 to the FSF for every copy of Red Hat Archives sold.
They have also added a GNU logo to the back of that CD with
the words "Supports the Free Software Foundation".

The SNOW 2.1 CD producers added the words "Includes $5 donation to the
FSF" to the front of their CD. Potential buyers will know just how
much of the price is for the FSF & how much is for the redistributor.

The Sun Users Group Deutschland has made it even clearer:
their CD says, "Price 90 DM, + 12 DM donation to the FSF."
We thank them for their contribution to our efforts.

KyotoMicroComputer of Japan
regularly gives us 10% of their GNU-related sales.

Mr. Hiroshi, Mr. Kojima, and the other authors
of the Linux Primer in Japan
have donated money from the sales of their book.

Infomagic has continued to make sizeable donations to the FSF.

At the request of author Arnold Robbins,
SpecializedSystemsConsultants,Inc.
continues to donate 3% of their profits from selling
Effective AWK Programming.
We would also like to acknowledge the many SSCauthors who
have donated their royalties and fees to the FSF.

In the long run, the success of free software depends on how much new free
software people develop. Free software distribution offers an opportunity
to raise funds for such development in an ethical way. These
redistributors have made use of the opportunity. Many others let it go to
waste.

You can help promote free software development by convincing for-a-fee
redistributors to contribute--either by doing development themselves
or by donating to development organizations (the FSF and others).

The way to convince distributors to contribute is to demand and expect
this of them. This means choosing among distributors partly by how
much they give to free software development. Then you can show
distributors they must compete to be the one who gives the most.

To make this work, you must insist on numbers that you can compare, such
as, "We will give ten dollars to the Foobar project for each disk sold."
A vague commitment, such as "A portion of the profits is donated,"
doesn't give you a basis for comparison. Even a precise fraction "of the
profits from this disk" is not very meaningful, since creative accounting
and unrelated business decisions can greatly alter what fraction of the
sales price counts as profit.

Also, press developers for firm information about what kind of development
they do or support. Some kinds make much more long-term difference than
others. For example, maintaining a separate version of a GNU program
contributes very little; maintaining a program on behalf of the GNU Project
<contributes much. Easy new ports contribute little, since someone else
would surely do them; difficult ports such as adding a new CPU to the GNU
compiler or Mach contribute more; major new features & programs
contribute the most.

By establishing the idea that supporting further development is "the
proper thing to do" when distributing free software for a fee, we can
assure a steady flow of resources for making more free software.

Help from Free Software Companies

When choosing a free software business, ask those you are considering
how much they do to assist free software development, e.g., by
contributing money to free software development or by writing free
software improvements themselves for general use. By basing your
decision partially on this factor, you can help encourage those who
profit from free software to contribute to its growth.

Wingnut (SRA's special GNU support group) regularly donates a part of its
income to the FSF to support the development of new GNU programs. Listing
them here is our way of thanking them.
Wingnut has made a pledge to donate 10% of their income to the FSF, and has
purchased several Deluxe Distribution packages in Japan. Also see
section Cygnus Matches Donations!.

Toyota's Donation

The VSC Research and Development group of
Toyota Motor Corporation sent us a note
saying that the FSF's "high quality software
makes our work easier, and we value it greatly....
Recently we have received some prizes and monetary awards for our work.
We believe we would not have received these without your software."
They are donating half of the award to the FSF
& hope that publication in the bulletin may encourage further donations
from others.

University or Software Company?

In academe, we like to think that a university has a
mission--advancing and disseminating knowledge. For today's
university administrators, though, perpetuation of the university has
become an end in itself, never mind how or why. In their blind
determination to "keep the university afloat," they forget why it
was launched.

If you work for a university, or study at one, don't assume it is
immune to this problem. When you write a program, don't let the
university administration decide whether to share it or not. Instead,
insist on a detailed written statement saying that you can share your
work with the public, and don't wait to finish your program before
you get the statement signed!

If you need help, contact the Free Software Foundation; we will be
glad to help you overcome this obstacle to make your software free.
Address the issue early--the sooner you deal with the problem, the
more likely you can solve it.

Bad News and Good News about Pine

Pine is a simple electronic mail reader for beginning users, which we have
included on our Source CDs since 1995.

In March of 1996, the Pine developers released a new version with new usage
restrictions. The new terms do not permit everyone to redistribute, and do
not in general permit distribution of modified versions. Either restriction
would be enough to prevent Pine from being free software.
This and subsequent versions are off-limits for the free software community.

The previous versions of Pine remain free. However, no substantial
program is bug-free, and every program needs to be maintained. So
in April 1996, the FSF recruited a team of volunteers
to carry on development of a free mail reader based on the last available
free release of Pine (3.91). (To avoid trademark issues,
our version will likely be released under a different name.)

Forking a program is unfortunate; people should try their best to work
together before giving up and working separately. So before embarking
on separate development, we tried our best to persuade the old
developers to make their work free software once again. In the end,
though, they rejected our plea.

The good news is that the team of volunteers has done substantial work,
and we hope for a release soon.

What Is the LPF?

The League for Programming Freedom (LPF) aims to protect the freedom to
write software. This freedom is threatened by "look-and-feel" interface
copyright lawsuits and by software patents.

The League is a grass-roots organization of professors, students, business
people, programmers, users, & even software companies dedicated to
bringing back the freedom to write programs. The League isn't opposed to
the legal system that Congress intended--copyright on individual programs.
The League aims to reverse recent changes made by judges in response to
special interests.

Membership dues in the League are $42 per year for programmers, managers,
and professionals; $10.50 for students; $21 for others.

To join, please send a check and the following information:

Your name and phone numbers (home, work, or both).

The address to use for League mailings, a few each year (please indicate
whether it is your home address or your work address).

The company you work for, and your position.

Your email address, so the League can contact you for political action.
(If you don't want to be contacted for this, please say so, but please
provide your email address anyway.)

Please mention anything about you which would enable your
endorsement of the League to impress the public.

Please say whether you would like to help with League activities.

The League is not connected with the Free Software Foundation, and
is not concerned with the issue of free software. The FSF supports the
League
because, like any software developer smaller than Microsoft, it is
endangered by
software patents and interface copyrights. You are in danger, too! It
would be easy to ignore the problem until you or your employer is sued, but
it is more prudent to organize before that happens.

What Is the Hurd?

The Hurd is a collection of server processes that run on top of Mach, a
free message-passing microkernel developed at CMU. The Hurd and Mach
together form the kernel of the GNU/Hurd operating system. The GNU C Library
implements the Unix "system call" interface by sending messages to
Hurd servers as appropriate.

The Hurd allows users to create and share useful projects without
knowing much about the internal workings of the system--projects that might
never have been attempted without freely available source, a well-designed
interface, and a multiple server design. The Hurd is thus like other
expandable GNU software, e.g. Emacs and GUILE.

Currently, there are free ports of the Mach kernel to the 386 PC, the DEC
PMAX workstation, and several other machines, with more in progress,
including the Amiga, PA-RISC HP 700, & DEC Alpha-3000. Contact us if
you want to help with one of these or start your own. Porting the GNU Hurd
& GNU C Library is easy (easier than porting GNU Emacs, certainly easier
than porting the compiler) once a Mach port to a particular platform
exists. Right now we are using the University of Utah's Mach distribution
(see `http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flux/')
which we hope will be unified with the distribution produced by the Open
Software Foundation.

We have made several test releases of the Hurd.
See section GNUs Flashes, for recent progress.

We need help with significant Hurd-related projects.
Experienced system programmers who are interested should send mail
to gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu. Porting the Mach kernel or the GNU C
Library to new systems is another way to help.

You can obtain
test releases of
the Hurd
from a GNU FTP host (listed in section How to Get GNU Software)
along with complete binaries for an i386 GNU system. We will not be
distributing these on CD-ROM until they are more stable.

GNUs Flashes

Hurd Progress (Also see section What Is
the Hurd?)
We have made two test releases of the Hurd, and we will make another
(version 0.2) in this month. Stability is improving, and we have begun
modifying various user-level utilities to understand new Hurd
filesystem features (fileutils, shellutils, tar, etc.).
One way for people to help out is to compile and run as much
third-party free software as they can; in this way we can find bugs
and deficiencies with some rapidity. Volunteers with a PC are
therefore eagerly sought to get the new 0.2 release and compile their
favorite Unix programs and games.

GNU System Progress
Version 0.2 of the GNU system will be released in this month, to coincide
with the 0.2 release of the Hurd. This complete GNU system is
available by FTP. We are working with Ian Murdock to develop
an excellent package management system for GNU. This will make
administering and upgrading the system much easier. Because of
features only the Hurd has, the GNU package management system will be
simpler and more featureful than similar package systems for various
GNU/Linux distributions.

New Source Code CD! (See section January 1997 Source Code CD-ROMs)
We are releasing the January 1997 (Edition 9) Source Code CD-ROM this month.
Once again, it is a two disk set.
It includes several new programs:
gforth,
gpc,
<Meta-HTML>,
stow,
units,
VRweb,
wget,
windows32api,
and
xinfo.
On the CD-ROMs are full distributions of X11R6.3, MIT Scheme, Emacs,
GCC, and current versions of all other GNU Software.
See section GNU Software, for more about these packages.

New Compiler Tools CD-ROM

We are releasing the January 1997 (Edition 4) Compiler Tools
Binaries CD. Support is included for several new operating
systems, including hppa1.1-hp-hpux10, powerpc-ibm-aix4.2,
sparc-sun-solaris2.4, and sparc-sun-solaris2.5.
These operating systems continue to be on this Cd-ROM:
i386-msdos, hppa1.1-hp-hpux9, sparc-sun-sunos4.1.
The Compiler Tools Binaries CD-ROM contains ready to run executables of the
GNU compiler tools
for some systems that don't normally come with a compiler. This allows
users of those systems to compile their own software without
having to buy a proprietary compiler.

We hope to include more systems with each update of this CD-ROM. If you
can help build binaries for new systems or have one to suggest,
please contact us at either address on
the top menu.
For more information, see section January 1997 Compiler Tools Binaries CD-ROM.

New/Updated Manuals since Last Bulletin (See section GNU Documentation)
Since the last bulletin, we have published new editions of:
Debugging with GDB, for version 4.16 with a new color cover;
Texinfo Manual, edition 2.24;
& the GNU Emacs Manual, for version 19.33 with a new color
cover.
Using and Porting GNU CC has been re-printed in a lay-flat bound
edition with a new color cover.
A new Bison Manual with a new color cover is planned.

Give to GNU the United Way!
As a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization, the FSF is eligible to receive United
Way funds. When donating to United Way, one can specify that all or part
of the donation be directed to the FSF. On the donor form, check the
"Specific Requests" box and include the sentence, "Send my gift to the
Free Software Foundation, 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110."
We especially appreciate the donations from Microsoft matching the United
Way donations of their employees.
Also see section Donations Translate Into Free Software and
section Cygnus Matches Donations!.

Proceedings of the First Conference on Freely Redistributable
Software
The Proceedings of the First Conference on Freely Redistributable Software
have been published.
They are available from the FSF while supplies last (see the FSF Order Form,
in the centerfold).

Tapes and MS-DOS Diskettes No Longer Available from the FSF
We no longer offer tapes or MS-DOS diskettes due to very low demand.

The FSF Takes Credit Cards
We take these credit cards: Carte Blanche, Diner's Club, MasterCard, JCB,
Visa, and American Express. Please note that we are charged about 5% of an
order's total amount in credit card processing fees. Please consider
paying by check instead or adding on a 5% donation to make up the
difference.
We do not recommend that you send credit card numbers to us via
email, since we have no way of insuring that the information will remain
confidential.

MULE Merge Almost Complete
MULE is the Multi-Lingual Emacs developed by Ken'ichi Handa at the
Electro-Technical Lab in Tsukuba, Japan. Handa has readied the code
for merging into Emacs and we expect to complete the merge soon.

GCC (For current status on GCC and GNAT, see section GNU Software)
New front ends for GCC are being done for Pascal & Chill.
Pascal, gpc, stagnated for some years,
but should be released by the time you read this. See
`http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~gnu-pascal'.

GUILE

GUILE is currently available as a test release.
GNU's Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extension
is an SCM-based
library that can make any ordinary C program extensible.
(For SCM info, see "JACAL" in section GNU Software.)

Also being developed are SCSH-compatible system call & Tk interfaces, a
module system, dynamic linking support, & a byte-code interpreter. Support
for Emacs Lisp & a more C-like language is coming.

units
Adrian Mariano is doing GNU's version of the traditional Unix
units program. It converts a quantity expressed in one scale
to another scale.

Texinfo (For current status, see section GNU Software)
Texinfo now provides macro facilities and supports multicolumn tables.
It comes with an install-info program that packages can use to
update the `dir' file automatically when they install their Info
files.

GNU Common Lisp (For current status, see section GNU Software)
Version 2.2.1 of GNU Common Lisp (GCL) was released in December '96. It now
includes a graphical interface to the Tk widget system. All documentation
is now Texinfo-based, with built-in regexp matching used to access the
documentation. A first pass at the Common Lisp condition system is also
included. Version 2.2.1 contains mainly updates to allow GCL 2.2 to
work correctly with current operating system levels, and to fix bugs.
Volunteers to help with the move to the ANSI standard
are most welcome; please contact schelter@math.utexas.edu.

Experimental Electronic Cash`http://www.lysator.liu.se/~nisse/NCash'
is an experimental implementation of anonymous electronic cash
which is to be released as free software.

Web page mirrored in France and Germany
The GNU WWW site
`http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu'
is now mirrored in Germany at the URL
`http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~gnu',
and in France at the URL:
`http://gnu.via.ecp.fr'.
The FSF thanks Peter Gerwinski and Yann Doussot for running these mirrors.

HTML Professional and GPL
The recent development and release of HTML Professional was made under
the terms of the GNU GPL. In order to facilitate distribution, the GPL
text was re-encoded into this more recent version of HTML, and is now
distributed with HTML Pro. An online copy can be retrieved at
`http://www.arbornet.org/~silmaril/dtds/html/gnugpl.html'.
HTML Pro is an unofficial version of the HTML DTD.
HTML Pro is distributed for
discussion by the www-html mailing list.
It composites all other known
versions, and allows World Wide Web designers to use
recent experimental additions in a rational and structured manner.
It comes with a .ced file for
GNU Emacs/psgml-mode and can be gotten at
`ftp://www.ucc.ie/pub/html/htmlpro.{zip|tar.gz|zip.hqx}'.
Documentation is at`http://www.arbornet.org/~silmaril/dtds/html/htmlpro.html'.

Meta-HTML 5.01 Source Release

Version 5.01 of Universal Access Inc.'s <Meta-HTML> is now available.

<Meta-HTML> is a programming language specifically designed to work
within the environment of the World Wide Web. Although it is a genuine
programming language, suitable for large-scale symbolic manipulation,
<Meta-HTML>
also provides the most commonly wanted Web functionality as built-in
primitives, so you don't have to write them. You can find out more
about the theory of implementation in this white paper
`http://www.metahtml.com/meta-html/manifesto.html'.
Web pages are authored using HTML and <Meta-HTML> statements freely
intermixed. When a page is requested by a browser, the page is passed
through the <Meta-HTML> engine, which
dynamically
processes any
<Meta-HTML> statements to produce a final HTML page which is delivered
to the browser.
The source distribution provides several different interpreter options:
a CGI engine which can be run by any Unix Web server;
a full-featured Web server (mhttpd) with the interpreter built in;
a standalone processor, much like Perl or Tcl; and
an interactive debugger, with a feel similar to GDB (mdb).
There is a user mailing list: metahtml-users@metahtml.com.
You can subscribe on the Web at `http://www.metahtml.com/E-Mail/',
or by sending mail to metahtml-users-request@metahtml.com.
Pre-compiled distribution sets for some systems are available via the
<Meta-HTML> Web site at `http://www.metahtml.com'.

Generic NQS 3.50.0 released

The new version of Generic NQS brings cluster-wide dynamic scheduling,
SMP support for Digital Unix, prologue/epilogue scripting, support
for new platforms (HP-UX 10 and Dynix 4), ease of installation,
& many bug fixes.
Generic NQS is firmly established as one of the world's leading
freely-available batch processing systems for Unix-like operating
systems, with over 100 installations world-wide, & over 20 with the
UK HE sector. Released under version 2 of the GNU General Public
License, Generic NQS supports one of the widest ranges of platforms,
& is the only freely-available batch processing system to make use
of extra scheduling capabilities of IRIX & Digital Unix.

For more information, visit `http://www.shef.ac.uk/~nqs'.

More Support for the Computer as Fax-Machine

Viewfax is designed for rapid interactive viewing of faxes on
your X-Window screen. If you have a fax modem & use one of the
freely available fax-packages such as HylaFAX or mgetty, viewfax
is ideal for reading received faxes & for previewing outgoing
ones. It takes less than a second for the page to appear on a
modern workstation. You can step forwards & backwards through
a sequence of pages & change the magnification by zooming in or
out.

Viewfax can look at any g3- or g4-coded fax file,
including multipage tiff/f files, so it can be part of a
document archiving system: you could scan b/w documents & store them as
g4-compressed tiff files; then view them later with viewfax.

VRweb Browser

VRweb, a browser for 3D models on the Web written in the Virtual Reality
Modeling Language (VRML), is now available under the GPL.
VRweb works in conjunction with Web browsers on Unix & Windows platforms.

VRweb is a joint project of IICM (home of Hyper-G), NCSA (home of
Mosaic), & the University of Minnesota (home of Gopher).
The software is freely available in binary & source.
VRweb 1.2 for Unix has just been released,
VRweb 1.2 for Windows will follow in due course.
You can download VRweb from
`ftp://iicm.tu-graz.ac.at/pub/Hyper-G/VRweb/Unix'
and numerous mirror sites.
Further information on VRweb can be found at
`http://hyperg.iicm.tu-graz.ac.at/vrweb'.

VRML is a non-proprietary, platform-independent file format for 3D
graphics on the Internet.
Also see
`http://www.sdsc.edu/vrml/', the VRML Repository.

Astronomical Analysis Systems Freed

by Dr. Joseph Harrington, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

In the past year, three of the five most popular data reduction
packages in astronomy have changed to free licensing. This is an exciting
development because it signals a shift in institutional thinking
toward GPL. These packages typically contain 100 MB--1 GB of code
and documentation. One is commercial (and remains proprietary) and
the rest were developed as projects of observatory consortia. Prior
licensing ranged from free-for-non-commercial to painfully negotiated,
individual paper licenses. The institutions have conquered their
fears and now trust the GPL to protect their interests.

The packages involved are:

AIPS++ - (C++ rewrite of Classic AIPS, first to go GPL in 1995)
National Radio Astronomy Observatory & many others,
GPL,
`http://aips2.nrao.edu/aips++/docs/html/aips++.html';

The owner of the commercial package was at a conference in September
& says he believes strongly in object-only licensing (he gets $1500
per user). Most people at the conference & in the field at large
strongly dislike the company's attitude & the restrictions placed on
this work, & much of the discussion at a workshop on interactive data
analysis environments centered on how to reproduce the functionality
of this package's excellent routines in a free system. This will be
Difficult, but the commitment appears to be there. A number of
efforts have already been started, one of which (numerical Python,
`http://www.python.org/') has the support of a major lab.

Free Music Philosophy

The Free Music Philosophy (FMP) is an idea that encourages free copying,
distribution, and modification of music. As with free software, the word
"free" refers to freedom, not price. The philosophy is that abridging
the freedom of music is destructive to society. The FMP primarily refers to
noncommercial use; commercial use is addressed elsewhere.

Compulsory licenses and tariff-based schemes free musical compositions and
sound recordings (the two forms of copyright in music) to a limited degree
for commercial purposes. Music is further freed by not abridging any
noncommercial use. The FMP advocates voluntary freeing of music (primarily
for noncommercial purposes, optionally for commercial purposes), to result
in a society with enhanced freedoms. The FMP serves as an ethical guide and
counters music industry propaganda.

Ram Samudrala has released his first album, Twisted Helices' Traversing a
Twisted Path, utilizing the FMP. It has sold 700+ copies in its first
seven months. There are many bands who have self-released albums, some
on major labels, that have not sold as many copies, or, more importantly,
have not seen revenues from the sale of even a single copy. While Samudrala
has done aggressive marketing, he attributes a significant part
of his success to the FMP.

Other bands have adopted this idea, motivated by ethics and the economic
benefits of the publicity provided by freeing music. A prime example is the
progressive-metal band Angra, who have sold 80,000+ of their first release.
Due to limited distribution of the official recordings, several bootlegs
have sprung up. Singer Andre Matos believes that the bootlegs have increased
sales.

Thus it can be argued that free music is good marketing. However, freeing
music must be motivated by ethics. The economic rationale is justification
against critics who argue that it deprives artists of income. Supporters of
the FMP are not opposed to musicians making an income from music, but feel
it is unethical to engage in destructive practices to do so.

To complete the GNU Translation Project, we need many people who
like their own language and write it well, and who are also able to
synergize with other translators speaking the same language as part of
"translation teams".

If you want to start a new team, or want more information on existing teams
or other aspects of this project, write
gnu-translation@prep.ai.mit.edu. Also see section GNU Software,
for information about gettext, the tool the GNU Translation
Project uses to help translators and programmers.

GNU & Other Free Software in Japan

Mieko (h-mieko@sra.co.jp) and Nobuyuki Hikichi
(hikichi@sra.co.jp) continue to volunteer for the GNU Project
in Japan. They translate each issue of this Bulletin into Japanese and
distribute it widely, along with the translation of Version 2 of the GNU
General Public License. This translation of the GPL is authorized by the
FSF and is available by anonymous FTP from ftp.sra.co.jp in
`/pub/gnu/local-fix/GPL2-j'. They are working on a formal
translation of the GNU Library General Public License. They also solicit
donations and offer GNU software consulting.

nepoch (the Japanese version of Epoch) & MULE are available and widely
used in Japan. MULE (the MULtilingual Enhancement of GNU Emacs) can handle
many character sets at once. Its features are being merged into the
principal version of Emacs. See section GNU Software, for more details on MULE.
The FSF does not distribute nepoch, but MULE is available on the
section January 1997 Source Code CD-ROMs.
FTP it from sh.wide.ad.jp in `/JAPAN/mule', or
etlport.etl.go.jp in `/pub/mule'.

The Village Center, Inc. prints a Japanese translation (ISBN
4-938704-02-1) of the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual and puts the
Texinfo source on various bulletin boards,
and prints each issue of the Japanese GNU's Bulletin.
They also publish Nobuyuki &
Mieko's Think GNU (ISBN 4-938704-10-2); this may be the first
non-FSF copylefted publication in Japan. They also redistribute GNU
CD-ROMs at this bookstore:

There is a mailing list in Japan to discuss both hardware & software which
is under the GNU General Public License. It provides information about
making your own computer system. The main language of the list is
Japanese. If you are interested in getting information or having
discussions in English, ask mka@apricot.juice.or.jp or
ishiz@muraoka.info.waseda.ac.jp.

Many groups in Japan now distribute GNU software. They include JUG, a PC
user group; ASCII, a periodical and book publisher; the Fujitsu FM
Towns users group; and SRA's special GNU users' support group, Wingnut, who
also purchased the first Deluxe Distribution package in Japan
(also see section Help from Free Software Companies). (Since
then, there have been several other purchases of Deluxe Distribution
packages in Japan.)

It is easy to place an order directly with the FSF from Japan, thus funding
new software. To get an FSF Order Form written in Japanese, ask
japan-fsf-orders@prep.ai.mit.edu.
We encourage you to buy our software CDs:
for example, 150 CD-ROM orders at the
corporate rate allow the FSF to hire a programmer for a year to write more
free software.

The Research Institute for Advanced Information Technology (AITEC)
releases ICOT Free Software (IFS) to the public. IFS is a software
archive in the field of parallel processing & knowledge processing
developed at ICOT in the Fifth Generation Computer Project & its
follow-on project. Besides IFS, AITEC has just started releasing many
software programs developed at many groups through its
research funding activities with release conditions similar to those
of IFS. Through their web page, AITEC releases 20 major IFS programs
& 22 programs developed through AITEC's research funding program.

As of the end of October 1996, over 4,600 persons have accessed
AITEC's web page, & almost 29,000 IFS files have been transferred
since the first release in 1992.

Newly developed software will be released to the public with conditions
similar to those of IFS.

For now, the domain name will remain icot.or.jp. For more
information, please see URL `http://www.icot.or.jp/'.

The ImageSearcher is an object-oriented program to search images by
specifying properties of the image itself, without relying on the
name or attributes of the file. It searches focusing on typical color,
average luminance, nine colors, image extent, center spectra, etc.
It runs on VisualWorks 2.5.1 (Smalltalk). As a
result of the "eMMa Project" research sponsored by IPA and SRA
(written by Atsushi Aoki), the source code and documentation are
distributed under the GPL as free software, and are
available via FTP from host
ftp.sra.co.jp
in file
`/pub/lang/smalltalk/ipa/VisualWorks2.5/IPA006.tar.gz'.

Forthcoming GNUs

Information about the current status of released GNU programs can be found
in section GNU Software. Here is some news of future plans.

e-scape
E-scape is being designed as a web browser with graphical capabilities.

gssgss is the GNU SQL Server. We expect to be making a test release soon.

GNU C Library (For current status, see section GNU Software)
Version 2.0 of the GNU C library should be released when you read this.
GNU/Hurd
support is now fully functional. The new GNU C library will also be
the new standard system C library on GNU/Linux, `libc.so.6'. The
GNU C library is now maintained by Ulrich Drepper (who also did the
Linux/i386 port) but it would not be what it is today without the help
of Roland McGrath (former maintainer and main contributor), David
Mosberger-Tang and Richard Henderson (Linux/Alpha and 64-bit ELF
support), Andreas Schwab (Linux/m68k support), and many others.
The goal for the GNU C library is to conform to the POSIX & X/Open
standards; we are very close to that goal. The main improvements are
new floating-point printing/reading functions that are perfectly accurate
& much faster than the old code (Ulrich); an `nsswitch.conf'
mechanism for versatile name database lookup, paving the way for easy
plug-in support of protocols like NIS (Roland & Ulrich); a complete
set of internationalization features including POSIX.2-compatible
locale & localedef programs, & catalogs for displaying
program messages in languages other than English (Ulrich again, the
Proceedings to the First Conference on Freely Redistributable
Software contains a paper about this work; to order a copy of the
Proceedings, see the FSF Order Form, in the centerfold).
The most progressive change is probably the complete thread-safeness.
Functions with a non-reentrant interface now have a reentrant
counterpart, others use internal locking. The whole standard I/O and
`nsswitch.conf' mechanism is thread safe. Together with a
separately available thread library the system now nearly 100%
conforms with the POSIX threads standard.
The library now builds as a shared library for systems that use the ELF
object file format. Included is the run-time loader (ld.so) which
sets up the shared libraries when a program runs; it works now with the
Hurd & Linux kernels, and is easy to port to other ELF systems such as SVR4
& Solaris 2.

GNU Emacs (For current status, see section GNU Software)
Future versions of Emacs will: save the undo history in a file (which allows
you to undo older changes in the history) and also have support for
variable-width fonts, wide character sets, and the world's major languages.
Our long term plan is to move it in the direction of a WYSIWYG word
processor & make it easier for beginners to use.

GNUstep (Also see "Objective-C Library" in section GNU Software)
OpenStep is an object-oriented application programming interface
specification being proposed as an open object standard. Since its
announcement over
three years ago, there has been much interest in a GNU
implementation, named GNUstep. Work has begun on GNUstep, starting with a
library written in Objective-C. Much remains to be done to bring this
library close to the OpenStep specifications. Volunteers should contact
mccallum@gnu.ai.mit.edu.
Also see `http://www.gnustep.org/'.

recode (For current status, see section GNU Software)
The next recode release should give more flexible control over
encodings of charsets, offer MIME conversions, & handle ISO-10646
(Unicode). It will install a library & support files to help work towards
internationalizing GNU.

Teak

Teak, the GNU desktop interface, is intended to enable users with
minimal computer experience to browse the filesystem, launch programs,
& perform file manipulations. Teak is still in the early
stages of development, but here are some of the features planned for
the first release:
view directories sorted by name, date, size, etc,
or treat the directory as a field of icons to arrange as they
please within the window;
drag-&-drop -- edit a file by
dragging it into an editor program's window, or print a file by
dropping it on a printer icon; &
for easy access, you can place icons for frequently-used files or
programs directly on the background of your screen.

For the second release, volunteers have offered to enhance Teak to
browse FTP sites, tar files, etc.
We have designed Teak around GUILE.
which will simplify Teak, keep its
user interface flexible, & allow easy interaction with other GNU
programs.
Teak's developer, Jim Blandy, also works on GUILE.
Jim has put aside Teak to concentrate on GUILE; after
enough progress has been made on GUILE,
he will be resuming his work on Teak.
Why do we call it Teak?
"Because Teak makes a mighty fine desktop."

ptx (For current status, see section GNU Software)
The next release of ptx should offer contextualized support for SGML
texts as the first step towards a major overhaul for the package.

C Interpreter
We hope to add interpreter facilities to our compiler and debugger. This
task is partly finished. GCC generates byte code for all supported
languages, but that support is in flux at this time. A new effort to
finish this work has begun. To make this work usable, we need to enhance
GDB to load the byte code dynamically. We would also like support for
compiling just a few selected functions in a file. Due to limited
resources, the FSF cannot fund this. Interested volunteers should contact
gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu.

Fortran (For info on f2c & GCC, see section GNU Software)
The GNU Fortran (g77) front end is stable, but more work is needed
to bring its overall packaging, feature set, and performance up to the
levels the Fortran community expects. Tasks to be done include: improving
documentation and diagnostics; speeding up compilation, especially for
large, densely initialized data tables; completing existing support for
INTEGER*2, INTEGER*8, and similar features; allowing
intrinsics in PARAMETER statements; and providing debug information
on COMMON and EQUIVALENCE variables. We don't know when
these things will be done, but hope some will be finished in the coming
months. You can speed progress by working on them or by offering funding.
A mailing list exists for announcements about g77. To subscribe,
ask info-gnu-fortran-request@prep.ai.mit.edu. To contact the
developer of g77 or get current status, write or finger
fortran@gnu.ai.mit.edu.

Smalltalk (For current status, see section GNU Software)
The next release, version 1.2, is planned to use Autoconf. It
will have substantial performance improvements & memory requirement
reductions, more control over memory allocation, ability to use the
Smalltalk interpreter as a C callable library, better X Window System
interfaces, ability to represent & manipulate C data structures in
Smalltalk, conditional compilation facilities, large integer support, an
advanced GUI-based class browsing system, better
TCP/IP interfaces, exception support, weak references, & finalization
support. It will run on Unix, DOS, & Windows NT.

The Dictionary Project
The FSF has a copy of the unabridged Century Dictionary, now in the
public domain, and we are planning to put it online. We tried OCR, but it
wasn't reliable enough.
Russell Nelson is coordinating the project. Volunteers have entered close
to fifty pages so far, but the project needs more help; to volunteer, send
mail to dictionary@gnu.ai.mit.edu or contact the FSF.

Free Software Support

The Free Software Foundation does not provide technical support. Our
mission is developing software, because that is the most time-efficient way
to increase what free software can do. We leave it to others to earn a
living providing support. We see programmers as providing a service, much
as doctors and lawyers do now; both medical and legal knowledge are freely
redistributable, but their practitioners charge for service.

The GNU Service Directory is a list of people who offer support & other
consulting services. It is
`/pub/gnu/GNUinfo/SERVICE' on a GNU FTP host (listed in section How to Get GNU Software),
on the World Wide Web
at URL `http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/prep/service.html',
in the file `etc/SERVICE' in the Emacs distribution,
&
the file `SERVICE' in the GCC distribution.
Contact us to get it or to be listed in it.
Service providers who share their income with the FSF are listed in
section Help from Free Software Companies.

If you find a deficiency in any GNU software, we want to know. We have
many Internet mailing lists for bug reports, announcements, & questions.
They are also gatewayed into USENET news as our gnu.* newsgroups.
Both are listed in file
`/pub/gnu/GNUinfo/MAILINGLISTS' on a GNU FTP host (listed in section How to Get GNU Software),
in the file `etc/MAILINGLISTS' in the Emacs distribution,
at URL `http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/prep/mailinglists.html'
or request it from either address on
the top menu.

When we receive a bug report, we usually try to fix the problem. While our
bug fixes may seem like individual assistance, they are not; they are part
of preparing a new improved version that help all users.
We may send you a patch for a bug so
that you can help us test the fix and ensure its quality. If your bug
report does not evoke a solution from us, you may still get one from
another user on our bug report mailing lists. Otherwise, use the
Service Directory.

Please do not ask us to help you install software or learn how to use
it--but do tell us how an installation script fails or where
documentation is unclear.

When choosing a service provider, ask those you are considering how
much they do to assist free software development, e.g., by contributing
money to free software development or by writing free software
improvements themselves for general use. By basing your decision partially
on this factor, you can encourage those who profit from free software
to contribute to its growth.

GNU Software

All our software is available via
FTP; see section How to Get GNU Software. We also offer
section CD-ROMs, and printed
section GNU Documentation,
which includes manuals and reference cards.
In the articles describing the contents of each medium, the version number
listed after each program name was current when we published this Bulletin.
When you order a newer CD-ROM, some of the programs may be newer and
therefore the version number higher. See the
see section Free Software Foundation Order Form,
for ordering information.

Some of the contents of our FTP distributions are compressed. We
have software on our FTP sites to uncompress these files. Due to
patent troubles with compress, we use another compression program,
gzip. (Such prohibitions on software development are fought by the
League for Programming Freedom; see section What Is the LPF?, for details.)

You may need to build GNU make before you build our other software.
Some vendors
supply no make utility at all and some native make programs
lack the VPATH feature essential for using the GNU configure system
to its full extent. The GNU make sources have a shell script to
build make itself on such systems.

We welcome all bug reports and enhancements sent to the appropriate
electronic mailing list (see section Free Software Support).

Configuring GNU Software

We are using Autoconf, a uniform scheme for configuring GNU software
packages in order to compile them (see "Autoconf" and "Automake" below,
in this article). The goal is to have all GNU software support the same
alternatives for naming machine and system types.

Ultimately, it will be possible to configure and build the entire system
all at once, eliminating the need to configure each individual package
separately.

You can also specify both the host and target system to build
cross-compilation tools.
Most GNU programs now use Autoconf-generated configure scripts.

GNU Software Now Available

[FSFman] shows that we sell a manual for that package.
[FSFrc] shows we sell a reference card for that package.
To order them, see the
see section Free Software Foundation Order Form.
See section GNU Documentation, for more information on the manuals. Source code
for each manual or reference card is included with each package.

acm (SrcCD)
acm is a LAN-oriented, multiplayer, aerial combat simulation that
runs under the X Window System. Players engage in air to air combat
against one another using heat seeking missiles and cannons.
We are working on a more accurate simulation of real airplane flight
characteristics.

ApacheAlso see`http://www.apache.org/' (SrcCD)
Apache is an HTTP server designed as a successor to the NCSA family of web
servers. It adds a significant amount of new functionality, has an extensive
API for modular enhancements, is extremely flexible without compromising speed,
and has an active development group and user community.

Autoconf (SrcCD)
Autoconf produces shell scripts which automatically configure source code
packages. These scripts adapt the packages to many kinds of Unix-like
systems without manual user intervention. Autoconf creates a script for a
package from a template file which lists the operating system features
which the package can use, in the form of m4 macro calls. Autoconf
requires GNU m4 to operate, but the resulting configure scripts it
generates do not.

Automake (SrcCD)
Automake is a tool for generating `Makefile.in's for use with Autoconf.
The generated makefiles are compliant with GNU Makefile standards.

BASH (SrcCD)
GNU's shell, BASH (Bourne Again SHell), is compatible with the
Unix sh and offers many extensions found in csh and
ksh. BASH has job control, csh-style command history,
command-line editing (with Emacs and vi modes built-in), and the
ability to rebind keys via the readline library. BASH conforms to the
POSIX 1003.2-1992 standard.

bc (SrcCD)
bc is an interactive algebraic language with arbitrary precision
numbers. GNU bc follows the POSIX 1003.2-1992
standard with several extensions, including multi-character variable names,
an else statement, and full Boolean expressions.
The RPN calculator dc is now distributed as part of the same
package, but GNU bc is not implemented as a dc preprocessor.

BFD (BinCD, SrcCD)

The Binary File Descriptor library allows a program which
operates on object files (e.g., ld or GDB) to support many
different formats in a clean way. BFD provides a portable interface, so
that only BFD needs to know the details of a particular format. One result
is that all programs using BFD will support formats such as a.out, COFF,
and ELF. BFD comes with Texinfo source for a manual (not yet
published on paper).

At present, BFD is not distributed separately; it is included with
packages that use it.

Binutils (BinCD, SrcCD)
Binutils includes these programs:
ar,
c++filt,
demangle,
gas,
gprof,
ld,
nlmconv,
nm,
objcopy,
objdump,
ranlib,
size,
strings,
&
strip.
Binutils version 2 uses the BFD library. The GNU assembler, gas,
supports the a29k, Alpha, H8/300, H8/500, HP-PA, i386, i960, m68k, m88k, MIPS,
NS32K, SH, SPARC, Tahoe, Vax, and Z8000 CPUs, and attempts to be compatible
with many other assemblers for Unix and embedded systems. It can produce
mixed C and assembly listings, and includes a macro facility similar to
that in some other assemblers. GNU's linker, ld, emits source-line
numbered error messages for multiply-defined symbols and undefined
references, and interprets a superset of AT&T's Linker Command Language,
which gives control over where segments are placed in memory.
nlmconv converts object files into Novell NetWare Loadable Modules.
objdump can disassemble code for most of the CPUs listed above, and
can display other data (e.g., symbols and relocations) from any file format
read by BFD.

C LibrarySee section Forthcoming GNUs (BinCD, SrcCD) [FSFman]
The GNU C library supports ISO C-1989, ISO C/amendment 1-1995, POSIX
1003.1-1990, POSIX 1003.1b-1993, POSIX 1003.1c-1995 (when the underlying
system permits), & most of the functions in POSIX 1003.2-1992.
It is nearly compliant with the extended XPG4.2 specification which
guarantees upward compatibility with 4.4BSD & many System V functions.
When used with the GNU Hurd, the C Library performs many functions of the
Unix system calls directly. Mike Haertel has written a fast malloc
which wastes less memory than the old GNU version.
GNU stdio lets you define new kinds of streams, just by writing a
few C functions. Two methods for handling translated messages help
writing internationalized programs & the user can adopt the
environment the program runs in to conform with local
conventions. Extended getopt functions are already used to
parse options, including long options, in many GNU utilities. The
name lookup functions now are modularized which makes it easier to
select the service which is needed for the specific database & the
document interface makes it easy to add new services. Texinfo source
for the GNU C Library Reference Manual is included
(see section GNU Documentation).
Previous versions of the GNU C library ran on a large number of
systems. The architecture-dependent parts of the C library have not been
updated since development on version 2.0 started, so today it
runs out of the box only on GNU/Hurd (all platforms GNU/Hurd
also runs on) & GNU/Linux (ix86, Alpha, m68k, work is in progress
for MIPS & Sparc). Other architectures will become available again
as soon as somebody does the port.

The distribution also includes the libstdc++ library. This implements
library facilities defined by the forthcoming ANSI/ISO C++ standard,
including strings, the iostream library, and a port of the Standard
Template Library.

cfengine (SrcCD)
cfengine is used to maintain site-wide configuration of a
heterogeneous Unix network using a simple high level language. Its
appearance is similar to rdist, but allows many more operations
to be performed automatically.
See Mark Burgess, "A Site Configuration Engine", Computing
Systems, Vol. 8, No. 3 (ask office@usenix.org how to
get a copy).

Chess (SrcCD)

GNU Chess lets most modern computers play a full game of chess. It
has a plain terminal interface, a curses interface, & the unique
X Windows interface xboard. Best results are obtained using
GNU C to compile GNU Chess.

Stuart Cracraft founded GNU Chess & is the project
lead for the 10+ year history of GNU Chess. Acknowledgements for
this past year's work include Chua Kong Sian, National
Supercomputing Research Center, Singapore; & Conor McCarthy,
Biomolecular/Biomed Science at Griffith University, Australia.

Send bugs to bug-gnu-chess@prep.ai.mit.edu &
general comments to info-gnu-chess@prep.ai.mit.edu.
Visit the author's website at `http://www.win.net/~msm/index.html'.
Play GNU Chess on the web at `http://www.delorie.com/game-room/chess'.

CLISP (SrcCD)
CLISP is a Common Lisp implementation by Bruno Haible & Michael Stoll.
It mostly supports the Lisp described by Common LISP: The Language
(2nd edition) & the ANSI Common Lisp standard. CLISP includes an
interpreter, a byte-compiler, a large subset of CLOS & a foreign language
interface. The user interface language (English, German, French) can be
chosen at run time. An X11 API is available through CLX & Garnet.
CLISP needs only 2 MB of memory & runs on many microcomputers (including
MS-DOS systems, OS/2, Windows NT, Windows 95, Amiga 500--4000, & Acorn
RISC PC) & all kinds of Unix systems.

GNU Common Lisp (GCL, formerly known as Kyoto Common Lisp) is a compiler
& interpreter for Common Lisp.
GCL is very portable & extremely
efficient on a wide class of applications, & compares favorably in
performance with commercial Lisps on several large theorem--prover &
symbolic algebra systems. GCL supports the CLtL1 specification but is
moving towards the proposed ANSI standard.

GCL compiles to C & then uses the native optimizing C compiler (e.g.,
GCC). A function with a fixed number of args & one value turns into a C
function of the same number of args, returning one value--so GCL is
maximally efficient on such calls. Its conservative garbage collector
gives great freedom to the C compiler to put Lisp values in
registers. It has a source level Lisp debugger for interpreted
code & displays source code in an Emacs window. Its profiler
(based on the C profiling tools) counts function calls & the time spent in
each function.

There is now a built-in interface to the Tk widget system. It runs
in a separate process, so users may monitor progress on Lisp
computations or interact with running computations via a windowing
interface.

There is also an Xlib interface via C (xgcl-2). CLX runs with GCL, as
does PCL (see
"PCL" later in this article).

GCL version 2.2.1 is released under the GNU Library General Public
License.

CLX (SrcCD)
CLX is an X Window interface library for GCL.
This is separate from the built-in TK interface.

cpio (SrcCD)
cpio is an archive program with all the features of SVR4
cpio, including support for the final POSIX 1003.1 ustar
standard. mt, a program to position magnetic tapes, is included with
cpio.

CVS (SrcCD)
CVS is a version control system (like RCS or SCCS) which allows you to
keep old versions of files (usually source code), keep a log of who,
when, and why changes occurred, etc. It handles multiple developers,
multiple directories, triggers to enable/log/control various operations,
and can work over a wide area network. It does not handle build
management or bug-tracking; these are handled by make and GNATS,
respectively.

DejaGnu (SrcCD)

DejaGnu is a framework to test programs with a single front end for all
tests. DejaGnu's flexibility & consistency makes it easy to write
tests.
DejaGnu will also work with remote hosts and embedded systems.

DejaGnu comes with expect, which runs scripts to conduct dialogs
with programs.

Diffutils (SrcCD)
GNU diff compares files showing line-by-line changes in several
flexible formats. It is much faster than traditional Unix versions. The
Diffutils package has diff, diff3, sdiff, &
cmp.
Future plans include support
for internationalization (e.g., error messages in Chinese) & some
non-Unix PC environments, & a library interface that can be used by
other free software.

doschk (SrcCD)
This program is a utility to help software developers ensure
that their source file names are distinguishable on System V platforms with
14-character filenames and on MS-DOS systems with 8+3 character filenames.

ed (SrcCD)
ed is the standard text editor.
It is line-oriented and can be used interactively or in scripts.

Elib (SrcCD)
Elib is a small library of Emacs Lisp functions, including routines for
using AVL trees and doubly-linked lists.

Elisp archive (SrcCD)
This is a snapshot of Ohio State's GNU Emacs Lisp FTP Archive. FTP it from
archive.cis.ohio-state.edu in
`/pub/gnu/emacs/elisp-archive'.

EmacsAlso see section Forthcoming GNUs[FSFman(s), FSFrc]
In 1975, Richard Stallman developed the first Emacs, an extensible,
customizable real-time display editor & computing environment. GNU Emacs
is his second implementation. It offers true Lisp--smoothly integrated
into the editor--for writing extensions & provides an interface to the
X Window System. It runs on Unix, MS-DOS, & Windows NT or 95. In addition to
its powerful native command set, Emacs can emulate the
editors vi & EDT (DEC's VMS editor). Emacs has many other features which
make it a full computing support environment. Source for
the GNU Emacs Manual
&
a reference card
comes with the software.
Sources for the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual,
&
Programming in Emacs Lisp: An Introduction
are distributed in separate packages. See section GNU Documentation.

es (SrcCD)
es is an extensible shell (based on rc) with first-class
functions, lexical scope, exceptions, and rich return values (i.e.,
functions can return values other than just numbers). es's
extensibility comes from the ability to modify and extend the shell's
built-in services, such as path searching and redirection. Like rc,
it is great for both interactive use and scripting, particularly since
its quoting rules are much less baroque than the C and Bourne shells.

enscript (SrcCD)
enscript is an upwardly-compatible replacement for the Adobe
enscript program. It formats ASCII files (outputting in Postscript)
and stores generated output to a file or sends it directly to the printer.

Exim (SrcCD)
Exim is a new Internet mail transfer agent, similar in style to Smail 3.
It can handle relatively high volume mail systems, header rewriting,
control over which hosts/nets may use it as a relay, blocking of
unwanted mail from specified hosts/nets/senders, and multiple local
domains on one mail host ("virtual domains") with several options for
the way these are handled.

f2cAlso see "Fortran" below & in section Forthcoming GNUs (SrcCD)
f2c converts Fortran-77 source into C or C++, which can be
compiled with GCC or G++. Get bug fixes by FTP from site
netlib.bell-labs.com or by email from
netlib@netlib.bell-labs.com.
For a summary, see the file `/netlib/f2c/readme.Z'.

ffcall (SrcCD)
ffcall is a C library for implementing foreign function calls in
embedded interpreters by Bill Triggs and Bruno Haible. It allows C
functions with arbitrary argument lists and return types to be called
or emulated (callbacks).

Findutils (SrcCD)
find is frequently used both interactively and in shell scripts to
find files which match certain criteria and perform arbitrary operations on
them. Also included are locate, which scans a database for file
names that match a pattern, and xargs, which applies a command to a
list of files.

Finger (SrcCD)
GNU Finger has more features than other finger programs. For sites with
many hosts, a single host may be designated as the finger server
host and other hosts at that site configured as finger clients. The
server host collects information about who is logged in on the clients. To
finger a user at a GNU Finger site, a query to any of its client hosts gets
useful information. GNU Finger supports many customization features,
including user output filters and site-programmable output for special
target names.

flex (BinCD, SrcCD) [FSFman, FSFrc]flex is a replacement for the lex scanner generator.
flex was written by Vern Paxson of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
and generates far more efficient scanners than lex does.
Sources for the Flex Manual and reference card are included
(see section GNU Documentation).

Fortran (g77) Also see section Forthcoming GNUs (SrcCD)
GNU Fortran (g77), developed by Craig Burley, is available for
public beta testing on the Internet. For now, g77 produces code
that is mostly object-compatible with f2c & uses the same
run-time library (libf2c).

GAWK (SrcCD) [FSFman]
GAWK is upwardly compatible with the latest POSIX specification of
awk. It also provides several useful extensions not found in other
awk implementations. Texinfo source for the The GNU Awk
User's Guide comes with the software (see section GNU Documentation).

gcal (SrcCD)
gcal is a program for printing calendars. It displays different
styled calendar sheets, eternal holiday lists, and fixed date warning
lists.

Version 2 of the GNU C Compiler supports the languages C, C++, and
Objective-C; the source
file name suffix or a compiler option selects the language.
(Also see "GNAT" later in this article for Ada language supports.)
Objective-C support was donated by NeXT. The runtime support needed to
run Objective-C programs is now distributed with GCC (this does not include
any Objective-C classes aside from object, but see "GNUstep" in
section Forthcoming GNUs).
As much as possible,
G++ is kept compatible with the evolving draft ANSI standard, but not
with cfront (AT&T's compiler), which has been diverging from ANSI.

Using the configuration scheme for GCC, building a cross-compiler is as
easy as building a native compiler.

Version 1 of GCC, G++, & libg++ are no longer maintained.

Texinfo source for the Using and Porting GNU CC manual
is included with GCC (see section GNU Documentation).

GDB (BinCD, SrcCD) [FSFman, FSFrc]

GDB, the GNU DeBugger, is a source-level debugger for C,
C++, & Fortran. It provides partial support for Modula-2 & Chill.

GDB can debug both C & C++, & will work with executables
made by many different compilers; but, C++ debugging will have
some limitations if you do not use GCC.
GDB has a command line user interface, and Emacs has GDB mode as an
interface. Two X interfaces (not distributed or maintained by the FSF)
are: gdbtk (FTP it from ftp.cygnus.com in directory
`/pub/gdb'); and xxgdb (FTP it from ftp.x.org in
directory `/contrib/utilities').
Executable files and symbol tables are read via the BFD library, which
allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs with multiple object file
formats (e.g., a.out, COFF, ELF). Other features include a rich command
language, remote debugging over serial lines or TCP/IP, and watchpoints
(breakpoints triggered when the value of an expression changes).
GDB uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library which (so far)
has simulators for the
ARM,
Hitachi H8/300,
Hitachi H8/500,
Hitachi Super-H,
PowerPC,
WDC 65816,
&
Zilog Z8001/2.
GDB can perform cross-debugging. To say that GDB targets a platform
means it can perform native or cross-debugging for it. To say that GDB can
host a given platform means that it can be built on it, but cannot
necessarily debug native programs.

Sources for the manual, Debugging with GDB, and a reference card
are included (see section GNU Documentation).

gdbm (SrcCD)
gdbm is the GNU replacement for the traditional dbm and
ndbm libraries. It implements a database using quick lookup by
hashing. gdbm does not ordinarily make sparse files (unlike its
Unix and BSD counterparts).

gettextAlso see section Help the GNU Translation Project (SrcCD)
The GNU gettext tool set has everything maintainers need to
internationalize a package's user messages.
Once a package has been internationalized, gettext's many tools help
translators localize messages to their native language and automate
handling the translation files.

Generic NQS (SrcCD)
Generic NQS is a network queuing system for spreading batch jobs across a
network of machines. It is designed to be simple to install on a
heterogeneous network of machines, and has optimizations for running on the
high end, symmetric multiprocessing servers that are currently on the
market. It
is available for many more Unix variants than any other comparable product, and
inter-operates with other NQS systems, including Cray's NQE.

geomviewSee`http://www.geom.umn.edu/software/geomview' (SrcCD)
geomview is an interactive geometry viewing program, for Unix systems
with Motif, using X, GL, or OpenGL graphics. It allows multiple independently
controllable objects and cameras.
geomview provides interactive control for motion, appearances
(including lighting, shading, and materials), picking on an object, edge
or vertex level, and snapshots in PPM or SGI image files, Postscript, and
Renderman RIB format.
geomview can be controlled through direct mouse
manipulation, control panels, and keyboard shortcuts. External programs
can also drive desired aspects of the viewer (such as continually loading
changing geometry or controlling the motion of certain objects) while
allowing interactive control of everything else.

gforth (SrcCD)
gforth is a fast, portable implementation of the ANS Forth language.

Ghostscript (SrcCD)

Ghostscript is an interpreter for the Postscript and PDF graphics languages.

The current version of GNU Ghostscript, 3.33, includes
nearly a full Postscript Level 2 interpreter and a PDF 1.0
interpreter. Significant new features include: support for anti-aliased
characters; the ability to scan a directory and register all the fonts in
it; support for Type 0 (Japanese / Chinese / Korean) fonts; and the ability
to compile all the external initialization files into the executable. This
version can also run as a 32-bit MS Windows application.
Thanks to the generosity of URW++ (Hamburg, Germany), the low-quality
bitmap-derived fonts distributed with older versions have been replaced
with commercial-quality, hinted outline fonts.
Ghostscript executes commands in the Postscript language by writing
directly to a printer, drawing on an X window, or writing to files for
printing later or manipulating with other graphics programs.

Ghostscript includes a C-callable graphics library (for client programs
that do not want to deal with the Postscript language). It also supports
i386/i486/Pentiums running DOS with EGA, VGA or SuperVGA graphics (but
please do not ask the FSF staff any questions about this; we do not
use DOS).

GNU mp is a library for arithmetic on arbitrary precision integers,
rational numbers, and floating-point numbers. It has a rich set of
functions with a regular interface.

A major new release, version 2, came out in Spring '96. Compared to previous
versions, it is much faster, contains lots of new functions, & has
support for arbitrary precision floating-point numbers.

Gnans (SrcCD)
Gnans is a program (and language) for the numerical study of
deterministic and stochastic dynamical systems. The dynamical systems
may evolve in continuous or discrete time. Gnans has graphical &
command line interfaces.

GNAT: The GNU Ada Translator (SrcCD)
GNAT, a front end for the entire Ada 95 language, including all special needs
annexes, is available via anonymous FTP from cs.nyu.edu
and various mirror sites in `/pub/gnat'. SGI, DEC, and
Siemens Nixdorf have chosen GNU Ada 95 as the Ada compiler for their
systems. GNAT is maintained by Ada Core Technologies. For more
information, see `http://www.gnat.com'.

GNATS (SrcCD)
GNATS, GNats: ATracking System, is a bug-tracking system.
It is based upon
the paradigm of a central site or organization which receives problem
reports and negotiates their resolution by electronic mail. Although it has
been used primarily as a software bug-tracking system so far, it is
sufficiently generalized that it could be used for handling system
administration issues, project management, or any number of other
applications.

GNUMATH (gnussl) (SrcCD)
GNUMATH is a library (gnussl) that simplifies scientific
programming in C & C++. Its focus is on problems that can be solved by a
straight-forward application of numerical linear algebra. It also handles
plotting. It is in beta release; it is expected to grow more
versatile & offer a wider scope in time.

gnuplot (SrcCD)
gnuplot is an interactive program for plotting mathematical
expressions and data. It plots both curves (2 dimensions) & surfaces (3
dimensions). It was neither written nor named for the GNU
Project; the name is a coincidence. Various GNU programs use
gnuplot.

gnuserv (SrcCD)
gnuserv is an enhanced version of Emacs' emacsclient
program. It lets the user direct a running Emacs to edit files or
evaluate arbitrary Emacs Lisp constructs from another process.

GnuGo (SrcCD)
GnuGo plays the game of Go. It is not yet very sophisticated.

gperf (SrcCD)
gperf generates perfect hash tables.
The C version is in package cperf.
The C++ version is in libg++.
Both produce hash functions in either C or C++.

Graphics (SrcCD)
GNU Graphics produces x-y plots from ASCII or binary
data. It outputs in Postscript, Tektronix 4010 compatible, and Unix
device-independent "plot" formats. It has a previewer for the X Window
System. Features include a spline interpolation program; examples
of shell scripts using graph and plot; a statistics
toolkit; and output in TekniCAD TDA and ln03 file formats. Email bugs or
queries to Rich Murphey, Rich@lamprey.utmb.edu.

grep (SrcCD)
This package has GNU grep, egrep, and fgrep, which find
lines that match entered patterns. They are much faster than the
traditional Unix versions.

Groff (SrcCD)
Groff is a document formatting system based on a device-independent version
of troff, &
includes:
eqn,
nroff,
pic,
refer,
tbl,
troff;
the
man,
ms,
&
mm macros;
& drivers for Postscript, TeX dvi format, the LaserJet 4 series
of printers, and typewriter-like devices. Groff's mm macro package
is almost compatible with the DWB mm macros with several extensions.
Also included is a modified version of the Berkeley me macros and an
enhanced version of the X11 xditview previewer. Written in C++,
these programs can be compiled with GNU C++ Version 2.7.2 or later.
Groff users are encouraged to contribute enhancements. Most needed
are complete Texinfo documentation, a grap emulation (a pic
preprocessor for typesetting graphs), a page-makeup postprocessor similar
to pm (see Computing Systems, Vol. 2, No. 2; ask
office@usenix.org how to get a copy), and an ASCII
output class for pic to integrate pic with
Texinfo. Questions and bug reports from users who have read the
documentation provided with Groff can be sent to
bug-groff@prep.ai.mit.edu.

hello (SrcCD)
The GNU hello program produces a familiar, friendly greeting. It
allows non-programmers to use a classic computer science tool which would
otherwise be unavailable to them. Because it is protected by the GNU
General Public License, users are free to share and change it.
hello is also a good example of a program that meets the GNU coding
standards. Like any truly useful program, hello contains a built-in
mail reader.

HylaFAXAlso see`http://www.vix.com/hylafax/' (SrcCD)
HylaFAX (once named FlexFAX) is a facsimile system for Unix systems. It
supports sending, receiving, & polled retrieval of facsimile, as well as
transparent shared data use of the modem.

ID Utils (SrcCD)
ID Utils is a package of simple, fast, high-capacity,
language-independent tools that index program identifiers, literal
numbers, or words of human-readable text. Queries can be issued from
the command-line, or from within Emacs, serving as an augmented tags
facility.

indent (SrcCD)

GNU indent formats C source code into the GNU, BSD, K&R, or
your own special indentation style.
GNU indent is more robust & provides more functionality than other
such programs, including handling C++ comments.
It runs on Unix, DOS, VMS and ATARI systems.

The next version will also format C++ source code.
A Java version may be considered in the future.

Inetutils (SrcCD)

Inetutils has common networking utilities & servers.

This release is mainly support the GNU Hurd, which is source
compatible with BSD in many ways, & will probably only work on systems that
are similarly compatible.

JACAL is a symbolic mathematics system for the manipulation &
simplification of algebraic equations & expressions. It is written in
Scheme using the SLIB portable Scheme Library. JACAL comes with SCM, an
IEEE P1178 & R4RS compliant Scheme implementation written in C. SCM runs
on Amiga, Atari-ST, MacOS, MS-DOS, OS/2, NOS/VE, Unicos, VMS, Unix, & similar
systems.

The FSF is not distributing JACAL on any physical media. You can FTP it or
get it from the Web site below.
Documentation is at
`http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/JACAL.html'.

Karma (SrcCD)
Karma is a signal and image processing library and visualization toolkit
that provides interprocess
communications, authentication, graphics display, and user interface to and
manipulation of the Karma network data structure. Several foreign data
formats are also supported. Karma comes packaged with a number of
generic visualization tools and some astronomy-specific tools.

less (SrcCD)
less is a display paginator similar to more and pg, but
with various features (such as the ability to scroll backwards) that most
pagers lack.

LynxAlso see`http://lynx.browser.org' (SrcCD)
Lynx is a text-only World Wide Web browser for those running
character-only ("cursor-addressable") terminals or terminal emulators.

m4 (SrcCD)
GNU m4 is an implementation of the traditional Unix macro processor.
It is mostly SVR4 compatible, although it has some extensions (e.g.,
handling more than 9 positional parameters to macros). m4 also has
built-in functions for including files, running shell commands, doing
arithmetic, etc.

make (BinCD, SrcCD) [FSFman]
GNU make supports POSIX 1003.2 and has all but a few obscure
features of the BSD and System V versions of make, and runs on
MS-DOS, AmigaDOS, VMS, & Windows NT or 95, as well as all
Unix-compatible systems. GNU extensions include long options, parallel
compilation, flexible implicit pattern rules, conditional execution, &
powerful text manipulation functions. Source for the Make
Manual comes with the program (see section GNU Documentation).

MandelSpawn (SrcCD)
A parallel Mandelbrot generation program for the X Window System.

Maxima (SrcCD)
Maxima is a Common Lisp implementation of MIT's Macsyma system for
computer based algebra.

Meta-HTML (SrcCD)
<Meta-HTML> is a programming language specifically designed for working
within the World Wide Web environment. Although it is a genuine
programming language, suitable for large-scale symbolic manipulation,
it provides the most commonly wanted Web functionality as built-in
primitives, so you don't have to write them.

Miscellaneous Files Distribution (SrcCD)
The GNU Miscellaneous Files are non-crucial files
that are common on various systems, including word
lists, airport codes, ZIP codes etc.

mkisofs (SrcCD)

mkisofs is a pre-mastering program to generate an ISO 9660 file system.
It takes a snapshot of a directory tree, and makes a binary
image which corresponds to an ISO 9660 file system when written to a
block device.

It can also generate the System Use Sharing Protocol
records of the Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol
(used to further describe the files in an ISO 9660 file system to a Unix
host; it provides information such as longer filenames, uid/gid,
permissions, and device nodes).
The mkisofs program is often used with cdwrite.
The cdwrite program
works by taking the image that mkisofs generates and
driving a cdwriter drive to actually burn the disk.
cdwrite works under
GNU/Linux, and supports popular cdwriter drives.
Older versions of cdwrite
were included with older versions of mkisofs;
sunsite.unc.edu has the latest version:
`/pub/Linux/utils/disk-management/cdwrite-2.0.tar.gz'.

mtools (SrcCD)
mtools is a set of public domain programs to allow Unix systems to
read, write, and manipulate files on an MS-DOS file system (usually a
diskette).

MULE (SrcCD)
MULE is a MULtilingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs. MULE text buffers can
contain a mix of characters from many languages including:
Japanese,
Chinese,
Korean,
Vietnamese,
Thai,
modern European languages (including Greek & Russian),
Arabic,
& Hebrew.
MULE also provides input methods for all of them. MULE is being merged
into GNU Emacs. See section GNU & Other Free Software in Japan, for more
information about MULE.

ncurses (SrcCD)
ncurses implements the Unix curses API for
developing screen-based programs that are terminal independent. It
is not merely an emulation of old (BSD) curses/termcap, but is fully
compatible with SVR4 curses/terminfo. It includes color, multiple-highlight,
& xterm mouse-event support.

NetHack (SrcCD)
NetHack is a Rogue-like adventure game supporting character & X displays.

NIH Class Library (SrcCD)
The NIH Class Library is a set of C++ classes (similar to
Smalltalk-80's) written in C++ by Keith Gorlen of the National Institutes
of Health (NIH).

OBST (SrcCD)
OBST is a persistent object management system with bindings to C++.
OBST supports incremental loading of methods. Its graphical tools
require the X Window System.
It features a hands-on tutorial including sample programs. It compiles
with G++, and should install easily on most Unix platforms.

OctaveAlso see`http://www.che.wisc.edu/octave' (SrcCD)
Octave does arithmetic for real and complex scalars and matrices,
solves sets of nonlinear algebraic equations,
integrates systems of ordinary differential & differential-algebraic
equations,
and integrates functions over finite & infinite intervals.
Two- & three-dimensional plotting is available using gnuplot.
Version 2.0 of Octave was released in December '96.
It includes support for dynamically linked functions, user-defined data
types, many new functions, & a completely revised manual. Octave
works on most Unix systems & OS/2. A port to Windows NT/95 is underway.

Oleo (SrcCD)
Oleo is a spreadsheet program (better for you than the more expensive
spreadsheets). It supports the X Window System and character-based
terminals, and can output Embedded Postscript renditions of spreadsheets.
Keybindings should be familiar to Emacs users and are configurable.
Oleo supports multiple variable-width fonts when used under the X Window
System or outputting to Postscript devices.

GNU ptx is our version of the traditional permuted index
generator. It handles multiple input files at once, has TeX
compatible output, & outputs readable KWIC (KeyWords In Context)
indexes without using nroff.

It does not yet handle input files that do not fit in memory all at
once.

rc (SrcCD)
rc is a shell that features a C-like syntax (much more so than
csh) and far cleaner quoting rules than the C or Bourne shells.
It's intended to be used interactively, but is also great for writing
scripts. It inspired the shell es.

RCS (SrcCD)
RCS, the Revision Control System, is used for version control & management
of software projects. Used with GNU diff, RCS can handle binary
files (8-bit data, executables, object files, etc).
RCS now conforms to GNU configuration standards & to POSIX 1003.1b-1993.
Also see the CVS item above.

recodeAlso see section Forthcoming GNUs (SrcCD)
GNU recode converts files between character sets and usages. When
exact transliterations are not possible, it may delete the offending
characters or fall back on approximations. This program recognizes or
outputs nearly 150 different character sets and is able to transliterate
files between almost any pair. Most RFC 1345 character sets are supported.

regex (SrcCD)
The GNU regular expression library supports POSIX.2, except for
internationalization features. It is included in many GNU programs which
do regular expression matching & is available separately. An alternate
regular expression package, rx, is faster than regex in many
cases; we were planning to replace regex with rx, but
it is not certain this will happen.

Roxen (SrcCD)
Roxen is a modularized, object-oriented, non-forking World Wide Web
server with high performance and throughput.
It was formerly named Spinner, but was renamed for trademark reasons.

rx (SrcCD)
Tom Lord has written rx, a new regular expression library which is
faster than the older GNU regex library. It is being
distributed with sed.
rx is also an installation option for
fileutils, id-utils, and textutils,
and maybe for future versions of
cpio, m4 and ptx.

SAOimage (SrcCD)
SAOimage is an X-based astronomical image viewer. It reads array data
images, which may be in specific formats, and displays them with a
pseudocolor colormap. There is full interactive control of the
colormap, panning and zooming, graphical annotation,
and cursor tracking in pixel and sky coordinates,
among other features.

Scheme (SrcCD)
Scheme is a simplified, lexically-scoped dialect of Lisp. It was designed
at MIT and other universities to teach students the art of programming and
to research new parallel programming constructs and compilation techniques.
We now distribute MIT Scheme 7.3, which conforms to the
"Revised^4 Report On the Algorithmic Language Scheme"
(MIT AI Lab Memo 848b), for which TeX source is included.
It is written partly in C, but is presently hard to bootstrap.
Binaries to bootstrap it exist for:
HP9000 series 300, 400, 700, & 800 (running HP-UX 9.0),
NeXT (NeXT OS 2 or 3.2),
DEC Alpha (OSF/1),
IBM RS/6000 (AIX),
Sun-3 or Sun-4 (SunOS 4.1),
DECstation 3100/5100 (Ultrix 4.0),
Sony NeWS-3250 (NEWS OS 5.01),
&
Intel i386 (MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 or NT).
If your system isn't on this list & you don't enjoy the bootstrap
challenge, see "JACAL" earlier in this article.

screen (SrcCD)
screen is a terminal multiplexer that runs several separate
"screens" (ttys) on a single character-based terminal. Each virtual
terminal emulates a DEC VT100 plus several ISO 2022 and ISO 6429 (ECMA 48,
ANSI X3.64) functions, including color. Arbitrary keyboard input
translation is also supported. screen sessions can be detached and
resumed later on a different terminal type. Output in detached sessions is
saved for later viewing.

sed (SrcCD)
sed is a stream-oriented version of ed. It comes with the
rx library.

Sharutils (SrcCD)
shar makes so-called shell archives out of many files, preparing
them for transmission by electronic mail services; unshar helps
unpack these shell archives after reception. uuencode and
uudecode are POSIX compliant implementations of a pair of programs
which transform files into a format that can be safely transmitted across
a 7-bit ASCII link.

Shogi is a Japanese game similar to Chess; a major difference is that
captured pieces can be returned into play.

GNU Shogi is a variant of GNU Chess; it implements the same features
& similar heuristics. As a new feature, sequences of
partial board patterns can be introduced to help the program play
toward specific opening patterns. It has both character and X display
interfaces.

It is primarily supported by Matthias Mutz on behalf of the FSF.

SIPP (SrcCD)
SIPP is a library for photorealisticly rendering 3D scenes. Scenes can
be illuminated by an arbitrary number of light sources; they are built up
of object hierarchies, with arbitrarily many subobjects and subsurfaces.
Surfaces can be rendered with either Phong, Gouraud, or flat shading. The
library supports programmable shaders and texture mapping.

Smail (SrcCD)
Smail is a mail transport system, designed as a compatible
drop-in replacement for sendmail. It uses a much simpler
configuration format than sendmail and is designed to be setup
with minimal effort.

SmalltalkAlso see section Forthcoming GNUs (SrcCD)
GNU Smalltalk is an interpreted object-oriented programming language system
written in highly portable C. It has been ported to DOS, many Unix, &
other OSes.
Features include a binary image save capability,
the ability to call user-written C code with parameters, an
Emacs editing mode, a version of the X protocol invocable from Smalltalk,
optional byte-code compilation and/or execution tracing, &
automatically loaded per-user initialization files. It implements all of
the classes & protocol in the book "Smalltalk-80: The
Language", except for the graphic user interface (GUI) related classes.

SNePS (SrcCD)
SNePS is the Semantic Network Processing System. It is an
implementation of a fully intensional theory of propositional
knowledge representation and reasoning. SNePS runs under
CLISP or GCL.

Superopt (SrcCD)
Superopt is a function sequence generator that uses an exhaustive
generate-and-test approach to find the shortest instruction sequence for a
given function. You provide a function as input, a CPU to generate code
for, and how many instructions you want. Its use in GCC is
described in the ACM SIGPLAN PLDI'92 Proceedings.
It supports: SPARC, m68k, m68020, m88k, IBM POWER and PowerPC, AMD 29k,
Intel x86 & 960, Pyramid, DEC Alpha, Hitachi SH, & HP--PA.

stow (SrcCD)
stow manages the installation of software packages, keeping
them separate while making them appear to be installed in the same
place.

tar (SrcCD)
GNU tar includes multi-volume support, the ability to archive sparse
files, compression/decompression, remote archives, and
special features that allow tar to be used for incremental and full
backups. GNU tar uses an early draft of the POSIX 1003.1
ustar format which is different from the final version. This
will be corrected in the future.

Termcap Library (SrcCD) [FSFman]
The GNU Termcap library is a drop-in replacement for `libtermcap.a' on
any system. It does not place an arbitrary limit on the size of Termcap
entries, unlike most other Termcap libraries. Included is source for the
Termcap Manual in Texinfo format (see section GNU Documentation).

Termutils (SrcCD)
The Termutils package contains programs for controlling terminals.
tput is a portable way for shell scripts to use special terminal
capabilities. tabs is a program to set hardware terminal tab
settings.

TeX (SrcCD)

TeX is a document formatting system that handles complicated
typesetting, including mathematics. It is GNU's standard text formatter.
The University of Washington maintains & supports a tape distribution of
TeX for Unix systems. The core material is Karl Berry's web2c
TeX package. Sources are available via anonymous FTP; retrieval
instructions are in `/pub/tex/unixtex.ftp' on ftp.cs.umb.edu.
If you receive any installation support from the University of Washington,
consider sending them a donation.

To order a full distribution written in tar on either a
1/4inch 4-track QIC-24 cartridge or a 4mm DAT cartridge, send
$210.00 to:

Please make checks payable to: `University of Washington'.
Do not specify any other payee. That causes accounting problems.
Checks must be in U.S. dollars, drawn on a U.S. bank.
Only prepaid orders can be handled.
Overseas sites: please add to the base cost $20.00 to ship via
air parcel post or $30.00 to ship via courier.
Please check with the above for current prices & formats.

UUCP (SrcCD)
GNU's UUCP system (written by Ian Lance Taylor) supports the f,
g (all window & packet sizes),
v,
G,
t,
e,
Zmodem,
&
two new bidirectional (i & j) protocols.
With a BSD sockets library, it can make TCP connections. With TLI
libraries, it can make TLI connections. Source is included for a manual
(not yet published by the FSF).

viewfax (SrcCD)
Viewfax is a tool for displaying fax files on an X display.
It can display raw, digifax or tiff/f files,
such as those received by HylaFAX.

W3 (SrcCD)
W3 (written by William Perry in Emacs Lisp) is an extensible, advanced
World Wide Web browser that runs as part of Emacs. It understands many
protocols & file formats: FTP, gopher, HTML, SMTP, Telnet, WAIS, etc.

wdiff (SrcCD)
wdiff is a front-end to GNU diff. It compares two files,
finding the words deleted or added to the first to make the
second. It has many output formats and works well with terminals and pagers.
wdiff is very useful when two texts differ only by a few words and
paragraphs have been refilled.

wget (SrcCD)
wget non-interactively retrieves files from the WWW using HTTP
& FTP. It is suitable for use in shell scripts.

windows32api (SrcCD)
windows32 is a set of header files & import libraries that
can be used by GNU tools for compiling & linking programs to be run
on Windows NT/95.

WN (SrcCD)
WN is a World Wide Web server designed to be secure and flexible. It
offers many different capabilities in pre-parsing files before passing
them to the client, and has a very different design from Apache and the
NCSA server.

X11 (SrcCD)

We distribute Version 11, Release 6.1 of the X Window System with the latest
patches & bug fixes. X11 includes all of the core software, documentation,
contributed clients, libraries, & toolkits,
games, etc.

While supplies last, we will distribute X11R5 on the November 1993
Source Code CD-ROM.

xboard (SrcCD)
xboard is a graphical chessboard for X Windows. It
can serve as a user interface to the Crafty or GNU chess
programs, the Internet Chess Servers, e-mail correspondence
chess, or games saved in Portable Game Notation.

xgrabsc (SrcCD)
xgrabsc is a screen capture program similar to xwd but
with a graphical user interface, more ways of selecting the
part of the screen to capture, & different types of output: Postscript,
color Postscript, xwd, bitmap, pixmap, & puzzle.

xinfo (SrcCD)
xinfo is an X-windows program for reading Info files. It uses
a special widget, which is available for use in other programs.

xshogi (SrcCD)
xshogi is a graphical Shogi (Japanese Chess) board for the X
Window System. It can serve as a user interface to GNU Shogi, as a
referee for games between two humans, or as a client for the Internet
Shogi Server.

The Deluxe Distribution

The Free Software Foundation has been asked repeatedly to create a package
that provides executables for all of our software. Normally we offer only
sources. The Deluxe Distribution provides binaries with the source code
and includes six T-shirts, all our CD-ROMs, printed manuals, & reference
cards.

The FSF Deluxe Distribution contains the binaries and sources to hundreds
of different programs including Emacs, the GNU C/C++ Compiler, the GNU
Debugger, the complete X Window System, and all the GNU utilities.

We will make a Deluxe Distribution for most machines/operating
systems. We may be able to send someone to your office to do the
compilation, if we can't find a suitable machine here. However, we
can only compile the programs that already support your chosen
machine/system -- porting is a separate matter. (To commission a port,
see the GNU Service Directory; details in section Free Software Support.)
Compiling all these programs takes time; a Deluxe Distribution for an
unusual machine will take longer to produce than one for a common machine.
Please contact the FSF Office with any questions.

We supply the software on a write-once CD-ROM (in ISO 9660 format with
"Rock Ridge" extensions),
or on one of these tapes in Unix tar format:
1600 or 6250bpi 1/2in reel,
Sun DC300XLP 1/4in cartridge -- QIC24,
IBM RS/6000 1/4in c.t. -- QIC 150,
Exabyte 8mm c.t., or
DAT 4mm c.t.
If your computer cannot read any of these, please contact us to see if we
can handle your format.

Every Deluxe Distribution also has a copy of the latest editions of
our CD-ROMs
that have sources of our software & compiler tool
binaries for some systems.
The
CDs are in ISO 9660 format with Rock Ridge extensions.

The price of the Deluxe Distribution is $5000 (shipping included). These
sales provide enormous financial assistance to help the FSF develop more
free software. To order, please fill out the "Deluxe Distribution"
section on the
see section Free Software Foundation Order Form
and send it to:

Our CDs are in ISO 9660 format & can be mounted as a read-only file
system on most computers. If your driver supports it, you can mount each
CD with "Rock Ridge" extensions
& it will look like a regular Unix file system, rather
than one full of truncated & otherwise mangled names that fit vanilla ISO
9660.

You can build most of the software without copying the sources off the CD.
You only need enough disk space for object files and intermediate build
targets.

Pricing of the GNU CD-ROMs

If a business or organization is ultimately paying, the January 1997 Source CD
set costs $240. The set costs $60 if you, an individual, are paying out of
your own pocket. The January 1997 Compiler Tools Binaries CD-ROM costs
$220 for a business or organization, and $55 for an individual.

What Do the Different Prices Mean?

The software on our disks is free; anyone can copy it and anyone can run it.
What we charge for is the physical disk and the service of distribution.

We charge two different prices depending on who is buying. When a company
or other organization buys the January 1997 Source CD-ROMs, we charge $240.
When an individual buys the same CD-ROMs, we charge just $60.
This distinction is not a matter of who is allowed to use the software. In
either case, once you have a copy, you can distribute as many copies as you
wish and there's no restriction on who can have or run them. The price
distinction is entirely a matter of what kind of entity pays for the CDs.

You, the reader, are certainly an individual, not a company. If you are
buying a disk "in person", then you are probably doing so as an
individual. But if you expect to be reimbursed by your employer, then the
disk is really for the company; so please pay the company price and get
reimbursed for it. We won't try to check up on you--we use the honor
system--so please cooperate.

Buying CDs at the company price is very helpful for GNU; just
150 Source CDs at that price support an FSF
programmer or tech writer for a year.

Why Is There an Individual Price?

In the past, our distribution tapes were ordered mainly by companies.
The CD at the price of $240 provides them with all of our software for a
much lower price than they would previously have paid for six different
tapes. To lower the price more would cut into the FSF's funds very
badly and decrease the software development we can do.

However, for individuals, $240 is
too high a price;
hardly anyone could afford that. So we decided to make CDs available to
individuals at the lower price of $60.

Is There a Maximum Price?

Our stated prices are minimum prices. Feel free to pay a higher price if
you wish to support GNU development more. The sky's the limit; we will
accept as high a price as you can offer. Or simply give a donation
(tax-deductible in the U.S.) to the Free Software Foundation, a
tax-exempt public charity.

January 1997 Compiler Tools Binaries CD-ROM

The fourth edition of our CD-ROM that has binaries and complete
sources for GNU compiler tools for some systems which lack a compiler,
will be available at the end of January 1997.
This enables the people who use these systems to compile GNU and other free
software without having to buy a proprietary compiler. You can also use
these GNU tools to compile your own C/C++/Objective-C programs.
Older editions of this CD are available while supplies last at a reduced
price; see the
see section Free Software Foundation Order Form.

We hope to have more systems on each update of this CD. If you can
help build binaries for new systems (especially those that don't come with
a C compiler), or have one to suggest, please contact us at the addresses
on
the top menu.

The older Source CDs are available while supplies last at a reduced price
(please note that the December 1994 Source CD is permanently out of stock).
All the Source CDs have Texinfo source for the GNU manuals listed in
section GNU Documentation.

MIT Scheme & much of X11 is not on the older Source CDs.

There are no precompiled programs on these Source CDs. You will need a C
compiler (programs which need some other interpreter or compiler normally
provide the C source for a bootstrapping program). We ship C compiler
binaries for some systems on the section January 1997 Compiler Tools Binaries CD-ROM.

January 1997 Source Code CD-ROMs

The 9th edition of our Source Code CD will be available at the end of January
1997 with two CD-ROM disks.
It has programs, bug fixes, & improvements not on the older Source CDs.
It has these packages, & some manuals that are not part of packages.
The version number of each package listed might be higher on the 9th
edition CD due to new releases being made between now and then.

CD-ROM Subscription Service

Our subscription service enables you to stay current with the latest GNU
developments. For a one-time cost equivalent to three Source CD-ROMs (plus
shipping in some cases), we will ship you four new versions of the
section Source Code CD-ROMs. The CD-ROMs are sent as they are issued
(currently twice a year, but we hope to make it more frequent).
We do not yet know if we will be offering subscriptions to the Compiler
Tools Binaries CD.

A subscription is an easy way to keep up with the regular bug fixes to the
X Window System. Each edition of the section Source Code CD-ROMs, has
updated sources for the X Window System.

Please note: In two cases, you must pay 4 times the normal shipping
required for a single order when you pay for each subscription. If you're
in Alaska, Hawaii, or Puerto Rico you must add $20.00 for shipping for each
subscription. If you're outside of the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico, you
must add $80.00 for each subscription. See "CD-ROMs" and "Tax and Shipping
Costs" on the
see section Free Software Foundation Order Form.

GNU Documentation

GNU is dedicated to having quality, easy-to-use online & printed
documentation.
GNU manuals are intended to explain underlying concepts, describe how to
use all the features of each program, & give examples of command use. GNU
manuals are distributed as Texinfo source files, which yield both typeset
hardcopy via the TeX document formatting system and online hypertext
display via the menu-driven Info system. Source for these manuals comes
with our software; here are the manuals that we publish as printed books. See the
see section Free Software Foundation Order Form,
to order them.

Most GNU manuals are bound as soft cover books with lay-flat
bindings. This allows you to open them so they lie flat on a table without
creasing the binding. They have an inner cloth spine and an outer
cardboard cover that will not break or crease as an ordinary paperback
will. Currently, the
Using and Porting GNU CC,
GDB,
Emacs,
Emacs Lisp Reference,
Programming in Emacs Lisp: An Introduction,
GNU Awk User's Guide,
Make,
&
Bison
manuals have this binding.
Our other manuals also lie flat when opened, using a GBC binding.
Our manuals are 7in by 9.25in except the 8.5in by
11in Calc manual.

The edition number of the manual and version number of the program listed
after each manual's name were current at the time this Bulletin was
published.

Debugging with GDB (for Version 4.16) tells how to run
your program under GNU Debugger control, examine and alter data, modify a
program's flow of control, and use GDB through GNU Emacs.

The GNU Emacs Manual (12th Edition for Version 19.33) describes editing with
GNU Emacs. It explains advanced features, including outline mode and
regular expression search; how to use special programming modes to write
languages like C++ and TeX;
how to use the tags utility;
how to compile and correct code; how to make your own keybindings; and
other elementary customizations.

Programming in Emacs Lisp: An Introduction (October 1995 Edition
1.04) is for people who are not necessarily interested in programming, but
who do want to customize or extend their computing environment. If you
read it in Emacs under Info mode, you can run the sample programs directly.

The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual (Edition 2.4 for Version 19.29)
and The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference, Japanese Edition (Japanese Draft
Revision 1.0, from English Edition 2.4 for Version 19.29)
cover this programming language in depth, including data types, control
structures, functions, macros, syntax tables, searching/matching, modes,
windows, keymaps, byte compilation, and the operating system interface.

The GNU Awk User's Guide (Edition 1.0 for Version 3.0) tells how
to use gawk. It is written for those who have never used awk and
describes features of this powerful string and record manipulation
language.
It clearly delineates those features which are part of POSIX
awk from gawk extensions, providing a comprehensive guide
to awk program portability.

GNU Make (Edition 0.50 for Version 3.75 Beta) describes GNU
make, a program used to rebuild parts of other programs. The manual
tells how to write makefiles, which specify how a program is to be
compiled and how its files depend on each other. Included are an
introductory chapter for novice users and a section about automatically
generated dependencies.

The Flex manual (Edition 1.03 for Version 2.3.7) teaches you to
write a lexical scanner definition for the flex program to create a
C++ or C-coded scanner that recognizes the patterns defined. You need
no prior knowledge of scanners.

The Bison Manual (November 1995 Edition for Version 1.25) teaches
you how to write context-free grammars for the Bison program that convert
into C-coded parsers. You need no prior knowledge of parser generators.

Using and Porting GNU CC (November 1995 Edition for Version 2.7.2)
tells how to run, install, and port the GNU C Compiler to new systems. It
lists new features and incompatibilities of GCC, but people not familiar
with C will still need a good reference on the C programming language. It
also covers G++.

The Texinfo manual (Edition 2.24 for Version 3) explains the markup
language that produces our online Info documentation & typeset
hardcopies. It tells you how to make tables, lists, chapters, nodes,
accented & special characters,
indexes, cross references, & how to catch mistakes.

The Termcap Manual (3rd Edition for Version 1.3), often
described as "twice as much as you ever wanted to know about termcap,"
details the format of the termcap database, the definitions of terminal
capabilities, and the process of interrogating a terminal description.
This manual is primarily for programmers.

The C Library Reference Manual (Edition 0.08 for Version 2.0)
describes the library's facilities, including both what Unix calls
"library functions" & "system calls." We are doing small copier runs
of this manual until it becomes more stable. Please send fixes to
bug-glibc-manual@prep.ai.mit.edu.

The Emacs Calc Manual (for Version 2.02) is both a
tutorial and a reference manual. It tells how to do ordinary
arithmetic, how to use Calc for algebra, calculus, and other forms of
mathematics, and how to extend Calc.

How to Get GNU Software

All the software & publications from the FSF are
distributed with permission to modify, copy, and redistribute.
One way to get GNU
software is to copy it from someone else who has it.
You can also get GNU software directly from the FSF by ordering
CD-ROMs and books. Such orders provide most of the
funds for the FSF staff to develop more free software, so please support
our work by ordering from the FSF if you can. See the
see section Free Software Foundation Order Form.

There are also third party groups who distribute our software.
Some are listed in section Free Software Redistributors Donate; also see
section Free Software for Microcomputers. Please note that the Free Software
Foundation is not affiliated with them in any way and is not
responsible for either the currency of their versions or the swiftness of
their responses.

If you decide to do business with a commercial distributor of free
software, ask them how much they do to assist free software development,
e.g., by contributing money to free software development projects or by
writing free software themselves for general use. By basing your decision
partially on this factor, you can help encourage support for free
software development.

Our main FTP host is very busy & limits the number of logins. Please use
one of these other sites that also provide GNU software via FTP (program:
ftp, user: anonymous, password: your e-mail
address, mode: binary). If you
can't reach one of them, get the software from GNU's main FTP host,
prep.ai.mit.edu (IP address: 18.159.0.42). More
hosts & details are in `/pub/gnu/GETTING.GNU.SOFTWARE' &
`/pub/gnu/GNUinfo/FTP' on any host.

Most of the files on the FTP sites are compressed with gzip to
lessen FTP traffic. Refer to the `/pub/gnu/=README-about-.gz-files'
on each FTP site for instructions on uncompressing them. uncompress
and unpackdo not work!

If you can UUCP, get e-mail instructions from info@contrib.de
(Europe).

FSF T-shirt

The front of our T-shirt
has the GNU Emacs Lisp code (USE 'GNU) with "()" being the
dancing parentheses from the cover of our GNU Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual (drawn by Berkeley, CA artist Etienne Suvasa). The shirt's back has
the Preamble to the GNU General Public License.

These shirts come in black, purple, red, pink, burgundy, blue, and
natural (off-white). When you order, please give 3 choices. Black
and purple are printed in white; the other colors are printed in
black. All shirts are thick 100% cotton, and come in sizes S, M, L,
XL, and XXL (but they run small so you may want a larger size than
usual).

GNU T-shirts often create spontaneous friendships at conferences &
on university campuses.
They also make great gifts for friends & family, including children!

Free Software for Microcomputers

We do not provide support for GNU software on most microcomputers because it is
peripheral to the GNU Project. However, we are willing to publish
information about groups who do support and maintain them. If you are
aware of any such efforts, please send the details, including postal
addresses, archive sites, and mailing lists, to either address on
the top menu.

See section CD-ROMs, for microcomputer software
available from the FSF. Please do not ask us about any other software. We
do not maintain any of it and have no additional information.

Linux Kernel

Linux (named after its main author, Linus Torvalds) is a GPLed kernel that
implements POSIX.1 functionality with SysV & BSD extensions. Complete
systems based on the Linux kernel are now available for Alpha &
386/486/Pentium/Pentium Pro
machines with one of these buses: ISA, VLB, EISA, PCI.
Since these systems are essentially
variant GNU systems, we call them "GNU/Linux" systems. An m68k port is in
testing (it runs on high end Amiga & Atari computers). PowerPC & MIPS
ports are being worked on.
FTP it from
tsx-11.mit.edu in `/pub/linux' (USA)
&
from
ftp.funet.fi in `/pub/Linux' (Europe).

Boston Computer Society
The BCS had numerous free microcomputer programs, including some GNU
programs.
The BCS is now dissolved, but many of the smaller groups operating under
it are expected to continue.
See URL: `http://www.bcs.org/'.

GNU Software on the Amiga
Get Amiga ports of many GNU programs via FTP from
ftp.funet.fi in `/pub/amiga/gnu' (Europe).
For info on (or offers to help with) the GCC port and related projects, ask
Leonard Norrgard, vinsci@nic.funet.fi. For info on the GNU
Emacs port,
ask Dave Gilbert, dgilbert@jaywon.pci.on.ca
or
see `http://www.realtime.tinymush.org/~dgilbert/emacs-19.html'
for a status update.
You can get more info from a GNU FTP host (listed in section How to Get GNU Software) in the file `/pub/gnu/MicrosPorts/Amiga'.

GNU Software for Atari TOS and Atari Minix
Get Atari ports by anonymous FTP from atari.archive.umich.edu,
in `/atari/Gnustuff', maintained by Howard Chu,
howard@lloyd.com.
The GNU software runs on all Atari 68000 and 68030-based systems; a hard
drive and 4 MB RAM minimum are recommended for using the compilers.
See USENET newsgroups, such as comp.sys.atari.st.tech, for
discussions.

GNU Software for OS/2

Ports of many GNU programs are on the FTP host ftp-os2.cdrom.com
in `/pub/os2'. One of these is of the GNU
C/C++/Objective-C Compiler to OS/2 2.x and OS/2 Warp, with the GNU
assembler, documentation, and OS/2-specific C libraries.

This is Eberhard Mattes' emx port, which also features GDB and many
Unix-related library functions like fork. Programs compiled by this
port also run on a 80386 under DOS. It is in directory
`/pub/os2/lang/emx09c'. emx 0.9c is a port of GCC 2.7.2.1.
To join the e-mail list, send email containing `subscribe emx' to
majordomo@iaehv.nl.

Project GNU Wish List

Wishes for this issue are for:

GNU art that highlights a program or aspect of the GNU Project.

Oleo extensions and other free software for business, such as accounting
and project management programs.
Graphical free software applications for ordinary users who are not
programmers.

Volunteers to distribute this Bulletin at technical conferences, trade
shows, local and national user group meetings, etc. Volunteers to get
articles into their user group newsletters. Please phone or fax the
numbers on
the top menu,
or email fsforder@gnu.ai.mit.edu to make
arrangements.

Boston area volunteers for various tasks in the FSF Distribution and
Programming Offices.
Please contact us at either address on
the top menu.

Volunteers to help write programs and documentation. Send mail to
gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu for the task list and coding standards.

Volunteers to type and proofread for the GNU Dictionary Project.
See section Forthcoming GNUs, for details.

Volunteers to build binaries for Deluxe Distributions & systems not yet on
the section January 1997 Compiler Tools Binaries CD-ROM
(especially systems without a C compiler).
Please contact us at either address on
the top menu.

Companies to lend good programmers & technical writers for at least six
months. True wizards may be welcome for less time, but we have found
that this is the minimum time for a programmer to finish a worthwhile
project.

Professors who might be interested in sponsoring or hosting research
assistants to do actual GNU development, with partial FSF support.

New quotes and ideas for articles in the GNU's Bulletin. We particularly
like to highlight organizations involved with free information exchanges,
software that uses the GNU General Public License, and companies providing
free software support as a primary business.

Information about free software or developers of free software that we may
not know about. Often, we only find out about interesting projects because
a user writes and asks us why we have not mentioned those projects!

Copies of newspaper and journal articles mentioning the GNU Project or GNU
software. Send these to the address on
the top menu,
or send a citation to citations@prep.ai.mit.edu.

Money, as always.

If you use & appreciate our software, please send contributions!
Another good way to help is to buy GNU books, CD-ROMs, and T-shirts.
A business can make a larger contribution by ordering a section The Deluxe Distribution. This is especially helpful if you work for an organization
where the word donation is anathema.
Because of the value received, the full dollar amounts of such donations are
not tax-deductible as charitable contributions; however, they may qualify
as a business expense.

Thank GNUs

Several GNU supporters have requested that donations be made to the
FSF in lieu of gifts to themselves. We appreciate their generosity.

We thank those
groups
who have donated us booths at their conferences, including
the Sun Users Group.

Thanks to all the volunteers who helped the GNU Project at
conferences;
Barry Meikle of the University of
Toronto Bookstore for donating ad space;
Warren A. Hunt, Jr. &
Computational Logic, Inc. for their continued
donations & support;
to Cygnus Solutions for helping the GNU Project in many ways.

Thanks to all who have contributed ports and extensions, as well as all
who have sent in other source code, documentation, and good bug reports.

Thanks to all those who sent money and offered other kinds of help.

Thanks to all those who support us by ordering T-shirts, manuals, reference
cards, distribution CD-ROMs, proceedings, and Deluxe Distributions.

Thanks to all those mentioned elsewhere in this and past Bulletins.

The creation of this Bulletin is our way of thanking all who have expressed
interest in what we are doing.

Donations Translate Into Free Software

If you appreciate Emacs, GNU CC, Ghostscript, and other free software,
you may wish to help us make sure there is more in the
future--remember, donations translate into more free software!

Your donation to us is tax-deductible in the United States. We gladly
accept any currency, although the U.S. dollar is the most
convenient.

If your employer has a matching gifts program for charitable donations,
please arrange to:
add the FSF to the list of organizations for your employer's matching gifts
program;
and
have your donation matched
(note section Cygnus Matches Donations!).
If you do not know, please ask your personnel department.

Circle amount you are donating, cut out this form,
and send it with your donation to:

Cygnus Matches Donations!

To encourage cash donations to the Free Software Foundation, Cygnus Solutions
will continue to contribute corporate funds to the FSF to accompany gifts by
its employees, and by its customers and their employees.

Donations payable to the Free Software Foundation should be sent by
eligible persons to Cygnus Solutions, which will add its gifts and forward the
total to the FSF each quarter. The FSF will provide the contributor with a
receipt to recognize the contribution (which is tax-deductible on U.S.
tax returns). To see if your employer is a Cygnus customer,
or for more information, please contact Cygnus: